What Makes You Leave Your path?
What makes you leave your path? If you are working on living a life you most desire what makes you choose differently?
In the Chinese language, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters, one of which represents danger while the other represents opportunity. If that is not a quintessential definition of life in this moment, I don’t know what is.
Outside of ourselves, the world may be going mad. There is a LOT of crazy random stuff going on out there, from politics to climate change to economic madness to coronavirus and more.
All of these things can influence and impact your life and the path that you are taking for it. If you choose to let them.
Of course, there are things way beyond your control that will have an impact on you. For example, nobody chose to maintain social-distancing (to this degree) and self-quarantine that I know of. But the degree with which it impacts you is up to you to decide.
This matter created by things outside of your control impacts you only as far as you allow it to. It may not let you practice your chosen vocation, for example. But maybe instead of that being a danger, it could be an opportunity.
What do you do in the face of uncertainty?
Life is constantly in a state of flux. Change is happening ALL THE TIME, no matter if you seek it out or not.
Even when you are on a path of your own choosing in life, things can and will happen to throw you off it. Some will be mere obstacles while others could require major detours. Then, still others could make you choose to leave the path. But we’ll get into that ahead.
Uncertainty is a certainty. Why? Because apart from your own mindset and headspace you control NOTHING.
Sorry, that’s just how it is. You have ZERO control over other people, your environment, the weather, the economy, or the collective consciousness. Nope, the only thing you can control is yourself.
When it comes to your mind, body, and soul they are wholly yours to control – to a point. Yet even given that, there are numerous uncertainties to be navigated when they crop up.
What if you contract Covid-19? What if a car hits you when you cross the street? How would you handle losing a limb or losing your sight or hearing? Any of these could happen to you no matter what precautions you take – short of barricading yourself under a blanket-fort.
Even that would not prevent all risk of uncertainty.
When you recognize that you will always have uncertainty along the way, you get to decide how to react to it. Cede control to whatever happens or be ready to take action? Shy away from it or face it head-on? The choice and the decision are yours.
What if the best choice is to leave your path?
As mentioned earlier, things can and will happen that will throw you off your path. Some will be mere obstacles while others could require major detours. Then, still others could make you choose to leave the path.
What makes you leave your path? This is all going to come down to what you choose to allow to impact you, or not, along the way.
For example, let’s say you run a personal coaching business featuring in-person coaching. Now, with the need for social distancing and the danger of spreading the coronavirus, you can’t visit anyone and do your work.
You have a choice. Abandon it entirely or adapt it? You don’t need to leave this path – you just need to alter it. Maybe you provide the same service by taking it online. Now your clients meet with you virtually.
This, in turn, could expand your business well outside of local travel. Clients around the globe can meet with you online.
However, maybe during this period of social distancing, you create webinars, articles, and other things that take you away from client contact. Maybe now you are sharing ideas sans contact. Instead of being available from 9-5 every day you can set this all up remotely and be available virtually whenever – and prerecord or prewrite all of it.
Rather than remain on the path you were on before with alterations, you now leave that path for a new one. Face-to-face coaching is a whole other animal from downloadable content creation. Thus, you leave your path. But you have already started down another.
What if the choice isn’t yours?
The choice is ALWAYS yours. However, there is no denying that unwanted things can force you to leave a beloved path.
For example, let’s say you’re a professional athlete. This is who you are and what you do, and it is the path you have been working on for DECADES. Then, you suffer a crippling injury, and just like that, it’s over. The path is gone.
What choice is there now? All of it. So long as you are alive you have the power to choose paths. Crisis or opportunity? It’s up to you.
No, maybe you didn’t choose to have to leave the path, but since you have left it you CAN choose what to do next. You get to decide if you will be lost, devastated, destroyed – or – seize the opportunity to take a new path for your life.
When I was hit by a car crossing a street 20 years ago, I made a choice. I would recover completely. That was the only option I could see ahead of me.
Yes, being injured could have forced me off my path. Truth is, it was the beginning of the path I am on now.
Given how many things in this life are beyond your control, it’s important to acknowledge and recognize how much is. All of it, however, is directly about YOU. Mindfulness and all related elements of mind, body, and soul make up the greater whole that is you.
When life turns to shit you get to decide if you will bury yourself in it or dig out. When you leave any given path, by choice or due to circumstance, you decide what happens next for you.
You are empowered to choose how to live your life.
What will you do with that power?
This is the four-hundred and thirtieth entry to my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly articles are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking along the path of life to consciously create reality. I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. I further desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
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