What Path Are You On?
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Are you living life with direction?
Everything in life is choices. We are constantly looking at decisions we can make, and options when it comes to our choices. Each of us can decide to be aware, or choose instead to make no choices at all.
For a long time, I wandered rather aimlessly through my life. I went where the wind blew, changed jobs and relationships frequently, and crowned myself to be King of Indecision.
To be honest, this is not a desirable title.
In time, I recognized that I desired more from my life. I had a desire to live a purposeful, directed life. So I started to really ask myself what I desired to have, and to analyze the choices I was and was not making, and also my decision process.
On many occasions, I would find myself at a crossroads. I was between ideas, between jobs or relationships or homes, and facing choices. More than once, I decided not to decide. That, as you might imagine, didn’t go so well for me getting to anywhere I truly desired to be.
More than once, when I reached that crossroads, I let life carry me along, and let life live me – rather than choosing to live life on my own terms.
There are always options when it comes to how to live. Three in particular:
- Let life live you
- Curl up in a ball and await death
- Live life on your terms
It can seem really easy to just let life live you, and go with the flow. I think for the majority, this is what they do. Some will be perpetual victims, and metaphorically await death.
Choosing a path is making the decision to live life on your own terms.
Discovering the path
Recognizing what path you are on is how you live life on your terms.
Because it is all-too-easy to get distracted, and to let outside influences and circumstances drive us day to day, even seeing a path to be on can be challenging. Why? Several reasons come to mind.
First – the state the world. I know that the world is always a pretty chaotic place, but at the moment it’s even more so. What’s worse, far too many of our so-called leaders, rather than be good examples, are bad examples. The unadulterated greed, unsympathetic actions, and pandering to the money with pretty much zero accountability is disheartening.
As such, taking an action for the self may feel selfish. It’s not, but it can feel that way, especially in the current atmosphere.
Second – societal expectations. There are certain cultural norms we tend to find expected of us. Often, choosing your own path goes against this. Care to feel isolated and alone? That is what we tend to fear about choosing a unique path.
Third – fear. We live in a fear-based society where our frequently lousy leaders use lack and scarcity to drive fear in order to sustain their supposed control. For example – Brexit. From the outside, it appears that fear of foreigners and a loss of sovereignty drove a pretty backwards decision that’s going to have unintended consequences. Here in the United States, Trump has created a rabid following by playing on their worst fears of lack and scarcity.
The important thing to bear in mind is this: you cannot change the outside world. We can influence it, we can take actions that will help change it, but we cannot change it directly. The only thing we can change at all is our own lives.
What path are you on?
Choosing a path is how I view taking charge of my life. Pathwalking is my philosophy for living life on my own terms. Rather than do something that makes me unhappy, and instead of just accepting what is given to me, I prefer to use the advantages I have to create the most amazing life that I can.
What path I choose at any given time, I know, will change. It will shift. Paths are seldom straight or without obstacles, twists, turns, and bumps along the way. What’s more, there is never only one path to choose, there are always options.
Choosing and having an end goal provides us with direction. But this is actually not as important as taking the journey. Every single day we are faced with choices. Yes, there are going to be days where we have had insufficient rest, unexpected and unplanned frustrations, and other issues that are going to cause us not to work on living life on our own terms.
Sometimes you haven’t the energy to do more than let life live you. Go with the flow, just be for a day or two. Also, there will be days where curling up in a ball and crying your eyes out because of pain or loss or what-have-you is all you can do.
This is why mindfulness is so important. When we are mindful of the fact that there are days we won’t be walking our path, we make it easier to return to it. Further, when we are aware of this, we will be less inclined to beat ourselves up over it.
Welcome to the human condition
Nobody is perfect. Or rather, everybody is perfectly imperfect. We will get it wrong. You and I will fail, hurt and be hurt, and from time to time feel like giving up. Congrats – we are only human.
We are the most adaptable animals on this planet. As such, you and I can make unique and totally varied choices for the lives we wish to live, and we can do some pretty amazing things as such.
What path you choose today you are not stuck on. You can change, choose anew, or have days where you don’t move much along the way. Recognizing there are always choices and options, however, opens you to pretty much endless possibilities.
What path would you choose to be on today?
This is the three-hundred eightieth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, 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, and 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 some expanded ideas, is available here.
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