Pathwalking 239
While you, and you alone, can choose and walk a given path, you don’t necessarily need to do so on your own.
The key is to know the difference between allowing someone to offer guidance, advice and help versus control, obstruction and discouragement.
Nobody knows everything. Plain and simple, nobody knows everything.
Because that’s the case, everyone needs to seek help, advice and assistance from time to time. While we may each have our own expertise, there will always be something we do not have familiarity with, and we may need to learn.
One of the best things about this life we have is that there is always something new to be learned. There is always something I don’t already know, which I can study and learn and gain new experiences from and with.
So how do you find assistance, and determine if it is helpful or hurtful?
There are three distinctly different ways in which you may be aided in the path you are working on. To be fair, I am generalizing here, but this is still an important consideration.
First – help from a person. You look for an expert in the field, a guide, a coach, or an assistant. You take an inspired action, and you choose someone to provide the help you need.
This can take several forms. You hire a coach, you have a sit-down conversation with a confidant, you engage a contemporary, you dive into a philosophical discussion with a stranger at the pub. Whatever form it takes, you have actively sought out this help, and are trying to get answers, assistance, and maybe even direction.
The challenge is to not give away your power to another. Sometimes the answer you receive will not be the answer you need. How will you know? You will know by how it makes you feel.
If you feel that the information the helper you commiserated with does not resonate with you, consider seeking other advice. But if you didn’t get the answer you wanted, but your gut tells you it’s still the right info, consider what to do with it.
When you choose to seek help in this manner, you have to keep in mind that some people will have their “best intentions” for you, and in the process attempt to control, obstruct or discourage whatever it is you are working on. You alone are inside your own head, so only you can decide if the advice you receive in any way aligns with your thoughts, your feelings and your actions.
When you seek out help in whatever manner you do, remember that you are still the one walking the path, you just needed information to continue, or options to make the best choices, or an alternative perspective to your own, or something else of this nature. If you are seeking help in order to let someone else control your path, it’s a question of how strongly you believe in the path you have chosen, and whether the time has come to choose another.
Second – help from a passive source. I have read any number of books on all kinds of different topics. Some have been in the holistic self-help pantheon, some have been more business oriented and professional.
There is a vast wealth of information out there, and as such numerous tomes have been written about nearly every topic you can imagine. However, some of that information is wildly speculative, some of it is outright incorrect, and some of it may not resonate with you.
I have read or listened to any number of books on the concept of consciousness creating reality. Some have had a greater impact than others, and some have been in a language that resonated more with my own thought process. Each has value, and each has given me assistance on my chosen paths in different ways.
I only want to caution you in giving all your power to the ideas of another. When you read something that makes sense to you and speaks to you in whatever manner it does, just check to make sure you are empowering yourself, not passing your empowerment away. How does what you have read make you think, feel, and want to act? That will tell you where you are at.
Third – help from random sources. This is the trickiest to make use of, and this sometimes requires a leap of faith.
How do random sources work? You put your trust in the universe to give you guidance. An omen, signs and portents. For example, you are watching TV, and a commercial for a product that you really could use on your path comes on. Less obvious, a character on a program makes a statement that resonates with you, and opens a new channel of information. As you are driving down the highway a billboard inspires you, or the name on a semi-truck somehow answers a question you’ve been asking. A random phone call from a friend shifts your path as you needed.
Once again, the caution here is to be careful not to disempower yourself. Pathwalking is about empowering ourselves, choosing where we want to direct our lives and the destiny we want to walk to.
Seeking for help is not a weakness. Everyone needs assistance from time to time. Know that you have choices, and you can get what you need to achieve the goals you’ve set along your path.
Where do you turn when you want aid and advice?
GOAL LOG – Week 29:
Diet: I am still eating pretty decently. The only downside was having a sugary cereal in the house, and not wholly resisting its sweet crunchiness. Onwards and forwards.
Exercise: Fencing happened twice last week. I need to increase my activity, as apart from some walking that was pretty much it.
Writing: Two days of writing. Working to ramp this back up, though I’ll be largely off for a week-and-a-half when I go on vacation.
Meditation: Six days of meditation, at least 4 minutes each day.
Gratitude: I wrote out 5 or 6 things to be grateful for six out of seven days.
This is the two-hundred thirty-ninth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas and my personal experiences in walking along the path of life. I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.
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