“What’s your POA?” her husband asked.

My sister was annoyed.  She didn’t have one.

There is a Buddhist story about a man on a horse.  As the man rides past his friend who is standing on the side of the road, the friend yells, “Where are you going?” The rider turns toward his friend and yells, “I don’t know, ask the horse!”

The legendary Jim Rohn was fond of saying, “If you don’t start making plans of your own, you’re always going to fit into someone else’s plans.”

POA.  Plan of Action.  Pretty important for Journeys of all sorts.

The plan is the first step.  And it’s not just an idea. Ann and I love ideas.  We can get lost for weeks in our ideas. A plan is something different.  It is an idea that has been shaped and refined into an objective, a goal.

Andrew Carnegie said, “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.”

But even more than that, a plan is like a road map.  It tells you how you’re going to get to your goal. And when.  A plan is something that will guide you step by step along the way.  And remind you when you lose sight of what you want to achieve.

“Most of us do not “sculpt” our lives,” says Susan Jeffers.  “We accept what comes our way…then we gripe about it.”

We have the power to sculpt our lives.  We have choices. We can make clear plans.

I sat for hours in front of my computer before we went to the Andes in January pouring over my maps and entering dozens of GPS coordinates.  I charted out where we were going to be on any given day, where we were going next, how many kilometers we’d hike, and how long it would take us.  With the GPS, we’d know for sure that we were on course and when we’d reach our goal.

That’s a plan.

Now here’s the tricky part: Action.

It was warm in front of my computer.  It wasn’t particularly so in the Andes. But to implement the plan, we actually had to tie on the boots, lift the heavy loads.  And start walking.  Yup. Action.

There’s an old story that goes something like this: Once there was a man whose home sat by a river.  For days it rained and the river rose up surrounding the house. A neighbor rowed a boat up to the front door and asked the man if he would like a ride to safety.  The man declined. “God will provide,” the man said. Well the rains kept coming and the river kept rising. Soon the river was up to the second floor of the house. A power boat from the National Guard came along and offered to rescue the man. The man declined. “God will provide,” he said.  As the river kept rising, the man was forced to the roof of the house.  A helicopter hovered overhead.  The pilot shouted down to the man offering him a ride to safety.  You know what happened. The man declined.  “God will provide,”  he said.  Well, of course, the man drowned. He appeared at the gates of heaven.  Rather annoyed, he confronted his Maker.  “I trusted in you God.  I thought you would provide.”  God replied, “I sent you a row boat, a power boat and a helicopter. What more did you want?”

Action is required.

Without action, a plan is useless. Without action, we drown in a river of empty ideas.

To succeed, take massive action, Tony Robbins says.  “All manner of good things begin to flow in your direction once you begin to take action,” says Jack Canfield.  English author John Ruskin says, “What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”

Every runner knows that the first step out the door is the most difficult one.  And going to the gym is the hardest part of the workout.

POAs are essential in just about everything we do.  Without them, we lose focus at work.  We get lost in the mountains.  We fall over the edge.

We even need them for our days “off.”  Otherwise, we end up wandering about, wondering where our time “went.”

Of course, like most things in life, there’s a bind.

Action without a plan gets us nowhere.  Action for the sake of action depletes us.   Ann and I get caught up in frenzies of activity sometimes and come to the end of the day feeling like burned out husks. We can get so focused on “getting things done” that we lose sight of why we’re doing them, or even whether there is a why.

The Plan.  And the Action. Both are necessary.

And most of all the Balance between the two.

You can’t cross a sea by merely staring into the water. — Rabindranath Tagore