Why Do We Stumble on Our Paths?
You stumble because it’s more about the path than the end goal.
Today is another day. It is full of potential, possibilities, and other great stuff.
If that’s how you perceive your reality. For some, today is another day. But it’s full of fear, distress, uncertainty, woe, and other awful stuff.
Both these perceptions are on the personal level. I’m not even going to go into the high-level happenings (such as the inauguration).
YOU get to choose – every single day – how you expect the day to be. Only you decide if it will be a good day or a bad day from the moment you wake up and get out of bed.
To be fair, there are things we must do that we’d rather not do. Doctor’s appointments, meetings, uncomfortable but necessary conversations, and so on. Knowing they will happen can color your first perception of the day. However – it’s still your choice.
Every day, you take steps along whatever path you’re on. Whether it’s a path you have chosen consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously. Every day represents new options. How you approach that – positive, negative, or neutrally – is up to you.
But – no matter what you choose you could stumble on your path. Why? This is due mostly to obstacles. Those obstacles come from two places – outside influences and inside influences.
You have no control over the outside influences. However, you DO control your reaction to them. Inside influences, though, are wholly yours. Nobody but you can control them.
When you stumble – and you will – how you recover is your choice. No matter if it’s due to outside or inside influences.
The tripping hazards of outside influences
These tend to come in three forms:
- Big picture, collective consciousness issues
- Ongoing issues
- Unexpected happenings
The big picture is splattered all over newspapers, social media, and the rest of the internet. They are politics, economics, religious and ethnic strife, nationalism, and so forth. Society overall pays attention to these and embeds them into your subconscious mind.
Hell, unless you live under a rock, you’re aware of the insanity surrounding the inauguration of Biden caused by Trump’s lies about a stolen election. That’s a pretty unmissable tripping hazard on our paths.
Ongoing issues tend to involve family, work, social interactions, and other expectations of outside people. Unless you live utterly alone as a hermit, you interact with people all the time. Those people will intentionally and unintentionally cause obstacles for you to stumble over.
This often has little to nothing to do with you and your path – but it’s there and unavoidable.
Finally, we come to unexpected happenings. This is car accidents, long lines at the grocery store, weather, frozen pipes, and so on. Things that are random, unexpected, and tend to be infuriating because they’ve made you stumble. Largely, they’re things you didn’t need or want in any way.
These various outside influences are beyond your control. Even those that you expect – like the big picture and ongoing matters – are out of your control. That’s because nobody but you is in your head. And you have no control over anyone else and how they think, feel, or act.
When you encounter outside influences, you will have no choice but to react to them – or not. But more on that ahead.
Inside influences causing you to stumble
This is where doubt, self-sabotage, low self-esteem, and similar issues come into play. They cause you to discover (or even create) obstacles and tripping hazards on your paths in life.
You WILL find tripping hazards to stumble over – of your own making – on any given path. That’s because you have a lot of old beliefs and habits that you may not even be wholly aware of. Those will get in your way.
For example – let’s say you’re on a path to earn more money. You have an idea, a goal, and you’re practicing what you need daily. But if you were inundated as a child with negative money beliefs – they will become obstacles.
If you heard constantly that money makes good people bad; money is the root of all evil, or even money is dirty – you’ve got things to stumble over. Those beliefs may not be YOUR beliefs. But because they were impressed upon you when you were most impressionable – they remain.
This is why mindfulness to gain insight into yourself is the key to dealing with inside influences. To become truly aware of them requires work.
This is how you can overcome both inside and outside influencers you might stumble over.
Mindfulness provides insight
On the surface, mindfulness is being aware – here and now – of your conscious self. It begins with awareness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. That is the door to get inside your head.
Once inside, you can familiarize yourself with your inner being – your mindset/headspace/psyche and overall sense of self. When you become familiar with your inner being you gain the ability to control it.
Control of your inner being is the gateway to your beliefs and habits. They tend to be rooted in your subconscious. Thus, awareness of your conscious mind lets you find them and either work with or change your beliefs and habits as needed.
Mindfulness allows you to see where you might stumble on your path due to inside influences. What about outside influences?
Mindfulness practice gives you power over your reaction to the outside influences. Do they make you stumble and fall – or stumble and regain your footing?
How does that work? Let’s say you are out for a drive and someone makes an illegal turn and hits your car. You certainly didn’t want or need this.
Now that it’s happened, you react to it. Do you get angry, frustrated, and lose your temper? Or – do you get angry, calm yourself, and deal with the matter at hand? Either way – that’s your choice.
Yes, in the moment you’ll probably be angry. Especially if the accident was due to the other person. But you choose if that anger will increase and make you unreasonable – or – decrease so you can be reasonable. Mindfulness is the key to what that will be and how it’ll go down.
The choice is yours.
What happens when you stumble?
Literally and figuratively, you WILL stumble along your way. Since every day is a new day – and presents new opportunities, potential, challenges, possibilities, uncertainties, and so on – you’re empowered to choose your perception and approach.
Just like tripping over your feet, you may fall – or you may readjust and regain your footing. That fall might cause injury – or you might bounce right back up.
Sometimes, when you stumble on your path – it’s a wake-up call. What did I just trip over? That might cause you to reevaluate your path. I didn’t realize this was going this way – I need to change it. You may have stumbled – but it woke you up, took you off autopilot, and helped you redirect yourself to a more desirable path.
Stumbling along on your path is the natural course of ANY given path. Whether you have chosen it consciously, subconsciously, or not at all – when you stumble it might be an opportunity.
Further, it might make you pause to see what’s along your path. It’s so easy to get caught up in day-to-day routines we often miss things along our way. Life is an ongoing journey – and you walk a path in one form or another every day.
You stumble because it’s more about the path than the end goal. Stumbling taps into your conscious mind and opens your awareness. While it can be annoying in the moment – it might wake you up to something amazing you would have missed had you not stumbled.
Finally – you are worthy and deserving of the paths you choose. Stumbling on them does not lessen this or prove otherwise. You are empowered to choose and decide on life as you desire for it to be.
What do you do when you stumble along your life paths?
This is the four-hundred and seventy-fourth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking 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 along the way. Additionally, I 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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