Have I Successfully Redirected the Redirect of my Redirection?
Confused? Redirection can be like that. But it’s still massively important to redirect.
I write a lot about very specific topics.
Mindfulness. Conscious reality creation. Self-awareness. Positivity. And general self-encouragement/self-help concepts, ideas, and notions.
In a nutshell – I write about seeking, finding, and creating new ways to be the best that we can each individually be.
I am not an expert, don’t hold any degrees related to these concepts. I’m a student of life and share my experience as well as my study on these topics.
The main reason I write and share these ideas is that they are all issues I am working on in my own life. What’s more – I know that I’m not alone in this.
All of these notions have evolved. That’s partially because change is the only constant in the universe. I change, you change, weather changes, times change – it’s ineffable. Because of the inevitability and constancy of change – the ideas I explore and share change, too.
More than once, I’ve taken a whole new approach. Other times, I’ve just made a change or two. And then – from time to time – I redirected what I was doing.
Why is redirection different? Because rather than changing an element of what I’m already doing or trying to rework what I am already working on – redirection is a new and different approach. It’s taking a new angle, doing something different.
Here’s the thing – I’ve written about this before. And I have redirected a redirect more than once. However – the question now before me is – did I truly redirect myself? Or just call it that, while trying for the umpteenth time to achieve the same thing?
The definition of insanity
I’m rather fond of this quote, generally misattributed to Albert Einstein (instead, it’s from author Rita Mae Brown),
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
How many times can I try to make certain changes in my life experience before I realize that I am doing the same thing over and over again?
Redirection? Sometimes. But it turns out, more often than not, I haven’t chosen a truly different, new path. Nope. Instead, I’ve altered my approach, maybe. Or shifted an element in a partial redirection.
What’s the difference? Until recently, I couldn’t properly define this. But what it looked like to me was this: I have tried to get to point ‘b’. I am at point ‘a’. The straight line isn’t getting me from here to there. Redirect. Now, I’m adding a couple of lefts and a right, swinging by point ‘c’, and altering my approach to get to point ‘b’.
Why isn’t that redirection? Because I am still starting my approach from point ‘a’. And that is where the problem of redirecting my redirection is.
You can’t redirect when you start out wrong
It has recently come to my attention, as I am studying self-sabotage more closely, that the way I redirected my redirect requires some real redirection.
What on Earth does that mean? Thanks to Gary John Bishop’s Stop Doing that Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back, I have a new idea about actual, factual redirection. If you are starting from the wrong point, you can’t truly redirect yourself.
Let me be blunt. ‘Point A’ is not who, what, where, how, and why I am today. In this moment. Nope. ‘Point A’ is in the past.
That’s the first part of the problem. Starting from who I was – even just a few days ago – means I am starting with all the conclusions I have reached about myself, as well as beliefs, values, and habits that are subconscious and may or may not have been addressed.
Every attempt to redirect, be redirected, or choose a redirection that I have made up to this point is predicated on a past matter. I am trying to not be who I was, where I was, or what I was doing in the work to become someone or something new.
Confused? Let me clarify this further. If I begin a journey from the past – I am bringing all the things of that past with me. I think a great summary of this is a quote from They Might Be Giants:
“If you’ve a date in Constantinople she’ll be waiting in Istanbul.”
Starting from the past is like trying to get from ‘point A’ in 1922 Philadelphia to ‘point B’ in 2022 Philadelphia. The roads might not exist anymore, or there might be new obstacles. And while you might arrive where you intend, it sure looks like the long, winding way to me.
I cannot redirect my future from the past
Can you change the past? Is there any possible way to redo the past, undo it, or alter it? No.
Lots of people want to return to the past in one way or another – but that’s impossible. So how come we try to create our future by starting from an unchangeable past? Can you see the lack of logic in that?
I haven’t. Not for most of my life. I’ve long recognized that the past could not be changed or altered and that I can’t redo it, undo it, etc. Yet it is from the past – and trying to change who I was and who I’ve been – that I’ve been attempting to create the future of my life that I most desire.
The future is now because the past has gone. It has passed. Did I learn anything from it? That’s the only thing that matters here.
To truly choose to redirect my redirection, I must begin NOW. Today. This moment of time and who, what, where, how, and why I am.
Self-sabotage, as Mr. Bishop points out, is a product of past conclusions reaching their icy hands from the depths of the subconscious to hold onto all they have concluded. The best – and possibly only – way to not self-sabotage is to start out in a place those conclusions aren’t.
Since they are of the past – that means now is the starting point.
Not the end, the beginning
It is time for me to redirect my redirection in a way I have never redirected before.
This is unfamiliar territory. But that’s only because it’s somewhere I’ve never gone before. No time like the present to start down that path.
And it’s not a single, funerary path. It’s a way I see from this point, this moment I am in here and now, to travel. If I choose to do so.
And that is what true, real, actual factual redirection is. Not a different route – a wholly new path. But to redirect my redirection, there’s a lot of bullshit and confusion to work from.
Plus – this will take some time and work. Because I must make a very conscious effort to start here and now – rather than from the past like I always have before.
I’m a little scared – but I am far, far more excited. Have I successfully redirected the redirect of my redirection? Only time will tell.
How do you see this idea for redirecting redirection from your own experience?
This is the five-hundred and thirty-third 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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