Coping with Conditions

During the Dharma talk tonight, GuoGu Pusa had talked about 4 distinct steps to deal with conditions. The first step is to recognize the conditions for what they are; the second, to adapt to the conditions; the third is to wait; and the fourth is to create. I quite enjoyed listening to this talk and how it was applied to the situation of an old age home. But I have to wonder, what are the complex relationships that determine when to approach one of these steps or the other?
  I guess what I am asking is, when to 'create' and when to 'wait'? Is this a linear relationship between one step and the other? I have a sense that these steps aren't necessarily in any clearly defined pattern or order. For example, I might found a special business (creation), then recognize later on that I lack the skills and resources to follow through on it (recognition), which in turn forces me to adapt to the new knowledge that I have (adaptation), or wait for new opportunities to arise (wait). It makes me wonder, based on this example, is there any reason why 'creation' comes last in the fourfold pattern of looking at conditions?
  One of the typical success patterns is that of the hero quest, and I found that this fourfold pattern seems to match a heroic pattern or model. Recognition represents the hero coming to terms with a problem and having to embark on a quest to solve the problem. Adaptation seems to refer to the complex learning process or initiation that the hero goes through before she or he can resolve the problem that has been recognized. Waiting is the period of crisis: a time when progress is slow and the hero has to go through many setbacks before a goal is achieved. Creation is the new contribution that the hero makes to the society based on her or his success.
   I may have stretched things a bit with this example, but the point is that it's tempting to turn this fourfold way of looking at conditions into a story. In fact, GuoGu Pusa warned his audience of how easy it is to get caught up in one's stories, and these stories form a sort of thought prison fashioned by the mind. It's only when I see the four steps as part of a never-ending cycle of impermanence that I can be calm and collected, not defining my success only according to what I create in life, but rather seeing that every step in this process has its own legitimacy and its own time for existing. In fact, they are all non-abiding and empty.