the path of least resistance
What do you want to be doing tomorrow? Next month? A year from now?
Where do you hope you’ll be?
It’s easy to get lulled into the swift passage of time, feeling a certain dosage of passivity or the uncontrollable flow and speed of the planet’s rotation through the days of our lives, and it’s easy to sort of fall into a rut and let things happen to you. To just get caught up in the flurry without a mindful attuning to what you want and what you’re doing to get it.
Don’t let your life merely be carried along by the accidental rippling effects of your choices or other people’s choices or what the path of least resistance offers straight ahead of you forever.
There will always be the path of least resistance. Things will stay the same unless you make a motion that changes them. The path of least resistance invites you to carry on, comfortably, listlessly, presumably forever, and just wait and see what happens while you keep minding your business doing what you’re already doing — maybe what you’ve always done.
You’ll never get different results if you keep doing the same exact thing.
If you don’t live in Europe, but you’ve always wanted to go to Europe, you will never magically find yourself in Europe — you know, “Some Day” — unless you take action and make some choice to do something that is very different from what you already do on a typical day.
This is true for everything else in your life, too: anything you want to change up, any experience you’ve yet to try but have always said you want to, wherever your career or relationships or family life might be headed…
Don’t just leave it up to the path of least resistance and hope you will be satisfied with whatever unfolds.
You’re steering this ship. You get to make your very own discoveries. You have the ability, permission, and encouragement (at least from me, even if from no one else!) to try things, anything, whatever you want, over and over, and to make your very own failures and build you very own successes, and most importantly — go on your very own adventures to let your life be lived as wholeheartedly, lit up, and aligned as possible.
Humans naturally and instinctively crave safety and comfort. Your lizard brain will tell you to take the path of least resistance every time. Anything else is too scary.
But what will you get if you face your fears?
What is waiting for you on the other side?
What could your life be like down some other path — the Path of Daring Courage, the Path of Curiosity, the Paths of Making and Endeavoring and Wondering! — instead of the Path of Least Resistance?
Is your goal to be comfortable, or is your dream to be totally fulfilled and delighted with your life, to be reaching your potential and knowing you are giving life your all and your very best? (Even though this means you’ll get scraped up sometimes, and you won’t be staying safe, and sometimes you’ll fail and feel pain and challenge! Even though these paths will require resilience! Because they are harder. Messier but oh-so-much better.)
…So what do you want to be doing tomorrow? Next month? A year from now?
Really think about it.
Don’t forget to imagine. Imagine your way to a brighter future. Feel and trust and act. Think of all the possibilities. Don’t neglect the dreams inside your heart (new ones or the ones that have been there all along). Try to paint your picture with the most colorful palette you can envision. Write your story with the boldest, most expansive chapters and plot lines, settings and characters, heart and warmth and genuineness.
And whatever you come up with? Whatever your answers are to the questions what do you want to be doing then and then and then?
Those things don’t happen by accident. Your life isn’t meant to be lived by accident either. Autopilot won’t bring you your bestest discoveries or truest love-filled experiences or memories.
Set your sights on a project, an adventure, something new you want to do… and then move towards it! Try it! Give something else up to take it in, if you must! Set yourself in its path. Invest yourself in its process. Keep showing up for it until it’s manifested in your life. Do this forever and ever and try to enjoy every minute.
What do you really want to be doing? How could this change your life?
P.S. Also, I’d like to say these are questions I am learning how to ask myself all the damn time, and I’m learning how to perk up and listen and then do something about it! Sometimes it feels really hard! (Scary things often do. Ditto change and transformation. Everything worthwhile!) And importantly — sometimes you will feel like you don’t have the answers to these questions. Sometimes the haze covers your eyes and you don’t see the path you should take. Sometimes feeling your way along takes a good long time and you aren’t really sure the whole way if it’s even working. This doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong! It probably means you’re doing it the most right. This is just how it goes. We make our paths as we take them. We carve each next step as we lovingly and sometimes clumsily stumble along, taking timid steps or confident ones, and the mystery unfolds through our own living and trying and learning and wanting and enjoying. Keep following your True North.
