What Do You Do When Your Path Isn’t What You Think It Is?
It’s your path – you can choose to reclaim it when you lose it.
It doesn’t matter what paths you choose in life. I don’t think they ever go as intended.
Why? Because life is full of uncertainty, situations, and circumstances way outside of your control.
For example, I knew the plans we had around Christmas for months now. I was all set to carry them out. Everything was in place and set to go as of the Wednesday before Sunday’s Christmas.
Then it all fell apart.
One case of mild COVID and the necessary isolation, alongside a random, utterly unexpected hospitalization of another family member later – the plans were shot to hell. Nobody could do a damned thing to control, plan for, or otherwise have expected this. The previously clear, known path was gone, erased, and utterly unclear.
I’ve taken all the precautions, had all the vaccinations and boosters, wear a mask on most shopping trips – and I still got COVID. Fortunately, a very mild case of it – probably because I’m vaccinated and boosted.
This path over the past week hasn’t been what I thought it was. Despite my plans and expectations, what IS is something different.
What do you do when your path isn’t what you thought it is?
Be here now with what is
I’ve just finished reading Byron Katie’s Loving What Is. And let me tell you – it’s an eye-opener is what it is.
Her idea – called The Work – is all about letting go of the false narratives you believe about your life, the people in it, your stories, and pretty much everything else about the way reality works.
I think The Work, applied, perfectly ties to Einstein’s quote,
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
The reality of illusion is based on what you know, believe, and value. That, in turn, is colored by your education, environment, life experiences, family, friends, circumstances, and everything else you take in consciously or subconsciously.
Ergo, my reality is a different illusion from your reality.
How you believe reality to be, isn’t necessarily what is. That’s Katie’s point. What is can be frequently disconnected from what you think it is.
Likewise, the path you choose to follow in life is based on the same stories you believe that form reality. As such, the path can slip away from you because it’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of what truly is.
What does that mean? What is, right here and now, simply is. No ifs, ands, or buts. The questions of what is are yes and no questions. For example – did my plans for Christmas go as plotted? Answering with either “No, but” or “Yes, but” isn’t what is. “No” is the simple, what is, answer.
Any hesitation or added but, except, however, or the like tagged to the answer means you’re not here, now, with what is.
Your path must be adaptable
Long ago, when I first started to learn the fundamentals of melee combat (teams on teams), one of – if not the first – rules is that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
What does that mean? In combat, that means that any plan you make is contingent on the opposition doing something expected. If we go left, they’ll go left and open their flank, for example.
If you stick to that assumption – and instead they move right before you can go left, the plan hasn’t survived contact with the enemy.
Hence why flexible plans that can be altered on the fly and are simple tend to be the best. The more complicated a plan the more points of failure it has that the opposition can exploit.
That’s life, too. We had all the plans in place for Christmas – and then they were derailed. The path was not as anticipated. Everything changed because it had to.
Random happenstance, unexpected circumstances, and unanticipated things happen all the time. Nobody plans to get cancer, lose a job, get dumped, get into a car accident, or the like. But it happens anyhow. And then your path isn’t what you thought it is.
Hence why your path should be adaptable.
How? Two things. First – be here, now, and enjoy the journey as it happens. Often the occurrences along the way on a journey can lead to interesting, unexpected places. You might gain something cool you wouldn’t have found had you just blindly focused ahead and ignored the journey itself.
Secondly – know that there is never One True Way™. Getting from ‘point A’ to ‘point B’ isn’t a solitary, one-of-a-kind straight path. Because life itself is never a single, solitary, one-of-a-kind straight path.
Being adaptable helps you work with this.
Your path and what is
As we depart 2022, and I move into the eleventh year of Pathwalking, I’m striving to work more with what is, rather than my story of the illusion of reality.
What the hell does that mean? It means that I am working to be clearer about what really, truly, is. Not what I think is or the story I believe about what is – but what is.
When you are more here, now, and attuned with what is – you suffer a lot less. There’s more peace, more calm, and you’re more centered. From that place of balance, you can better see paths from where you are – and what is – to where you desire to be.
I’m finding more and more that life is only complicated and difficult if that’s the story I tell. What’s more, there only control I have is of myself. Specifically, via mindfulness, I control my conscious awareness. That control tells me who, what, where, how, and why I am.
To gain conscious awareness, I need to know what I’m thinking, what and how I’m feeling, what my intentions are, and why I take any actions I choose to take. That mindfulness is the control available to you, too.
When you are here, now, and living in what is, you can adjust your path. When you find that your path isn’t what you think it is – you have the power to change it as necessary.
My New Years’ Action for 2023 is to do The Work more regularly, learn to love what is and what that means, and keep creating, sharing, and doing.
What does your path look like now and going forward in 2023?
This is the five-hundred and seventy-fifth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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