You’re standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down. You hear a little voice inside of you telling you to jump.
That little voice is your call to adventure.
It’s an urge to try for something more, seek deeper meaning and purpose, to go on your personal quest.
It demands you answer the question: What was I put here on this Earth to do?
But you hesitate.
For all your life, you’ve conformed, obeyed, followed. You were safe. There was routine, there was certainty.
It’s scary on the edge. Nobody knows what happens after the jump.
So here you limbo, on the precipice of your darkest fears and your wildest dreams.
As you contemplate the jump, your deepest fears creep up on you: doubts, uncertainties, hesitation, judgment, dread.
You ask yourself:
- How do I find my path?
- What if I do not have what it takes for the journey?
- What if what matters to me today becomes trivial tomorrow?
- When is the right time to start?
How do I find my path?
What if it isn’t really about finding your path, but about creating your path?
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.
Terence McKenna
You cannot see past the cliff because whatever lies beyond is for you to create. It’s a simultaneous creation and discovery. As you walk the path, you discover more of who you are. As more of who you truly are emerges, you pave a path increasingly aligned with your personal values.
To begin discovering yourself, you start by exploring.
You may not need to quit your job or give up your stable income to explore. But you do need an open heart, and a willingness to face your deepest fears. You need to be honest with yourself about who you are and what really matters to you.
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you go about your exploration:
1. Why am I doing this?
You have a unique core and essence. You have a life task, a life goal, a purpose. This is why you are here. What are you here on earth to do?
You have to find your inner ‘why’.
Artist Elle Luna says this is about who you are, what you believe, and what you do when you are alone with your truest, most authentic self.
It’s that which calls to you most deeply.
2. How do I express myself?
After you’ve found your ‘why’, you’ll then seek to express that in the world. Maybe your inner self tells you to teach. Or to bring joy to the world.
How then will you express that? Would you be a university professor? Or become a coach? Would you become a singer and sing about joy?
We each have different gifts and talents. How can you best use your gifts and talents to serve the world?
Some choose to be writers. Others start businesses. Still others choose to become yoga instructors.
What is your expression?
3. Who do I want to impact?
Who do you want to impact through walking this path?
We each have shame. We each have broken parts of us. We each have our hurts and our darkness. But we also have light, love, and infinite potential within.
In healing the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves, we gain strength and power. We connect to love and light. The world needs each of us to heal ourselves, be our true selves, and shine.
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
In choosing a path that matters to you, who do you most wish to impact?
Do you wish to impact yourself, and heal the broken parts of you? Do you wish to reach your fullest potential, to find greatness and infinity within you?
Or is there a group of people you care for deeply? Perhaps you walked out on an abusive relationship, and now what to empower abuse victims. Perhaps you had to deal with losing a child, and now want to support other grieving parents.
The darkest parts of your journey are also where your light shone the brightest. You can use that light to help and guide others.
Who do you most want to impact?
What if I do not have what it takes for the journey?
To achieve greatness, start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe
Wherever you are, you are ready. You just need to let go of the fears that keep you in your comfort zone, so that you can explore what truly matters to you.
Here are five things to let go of in order to find your path:
1. Fear of uncertainty
Going on any sort of meaningful journey requires us to step into the unknown. However, being afraid of the unknown, we desperately cling to what is familiar. When we are unable to let go of safety, we cannot discover anything new.
2. Fear of judgment
We care too much about what other people think and do not dare to rock the boat. If we stop off the well-trodden path, people might judge us. We would no longer have the approval of society. We don’t dare to stand out, and therefore prefer being just another face in the crowd.
3. Self-doubt
We have spent most of our lives doing what other people said is good for us. We stopped trusting our inner voice to tell us what’s right. So when that inner voice urges us to step into the unknown and forge a new path, we hesitate. After all, we have made it a practice to do the ‘realistic’ thing, instead of following our hearts.
4. Feelings of unworthiness
We hear the call to adventure, but do not feel worthy of answering the call. Who am I to be special? Who am I to deserve happiness? Who am I to be great? All our lives we have waited to be chosen. Without someone else choosing us, we do not dare to choose ourselves.
5. Fear of failure
What if we fail? If we colour outside the lines, we put ourselves up for ridicule. People will now be able to single us out if we fail. We become just another failed dream, another laughing stock, another cautionary tale of why it’s better just to take the safe option.
What if what I do today becomes trivial to me tomorrow?
Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.
Eckhart Tolle
We can never know for sure what will happen tomorrow. What we know for sure is, if you don’t try, you will never know.
If you never try pursuing what you think is important today, you will always live in the realm of ‘what if’. Only be actually achieving your goal or dream will you have the clarity and knowledge to decide whether it is truly important.
When is the right time to start?
It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.
Eckhart Tolle
If something is important to us, it is worth beginning now. Now is really all that you have.
Any desires to put off something to the future is procrastination or avoidance. ‘Later’ is a convenient excuse we give when we don’t want to face our fears. Because we don’t want to give up the safety we have today, we schedule risk for some later date. Because we are unable to make difficult decisions and be honest with ourselves, we defer our decisions.
This is similar to the fallacy of, “When I retire, then I’ll do what I love.” Putting off choosing a path for 30 years is not making a decision. It’s choosing not to decide, which is ultimately still a choice to escape. Putting off doing what matters is mortgaging your present for a nebulous future, always preparing to live and never living.
How long more are you satisfied to live a half-life of neither here nor there? How long more will you hang onto the illusion of future and never fully live? The future is no more than a fantasy if you do not take concrete steps to build it.
Our culture has taught us to chase the future, to give up the present for a future payoff. As a result, we have generations of people slogging away in jobs they do not like, holding their breaths for anticipated release. Only, release never comes. We hold our breaths until we asphyxiate.
‘One day’ always becomes never.
The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.
Les Brown
Now is the only time there is.
Start now.
