As a perfectionist, I tend to worry over my decisions. Was I wrong? Have I made a mistake? Too much time spent ruminating can bring on a bad case of the what-ifs.
One of the many benefits of getting older is that you have more life experiences to look back on and learn from. This is particularly helpful when you are gearing up for your next move on the chessboard of life, and your palms are getting a little sweaty thinking about whether you’ve locked in a win or it’s game over. What my life keeps teaching me is that there are no mistakes. That’s right: making a mistake is impossible. All of it, the thrills and the falls, are an essential part of who I am today.
We are not champions or failures. We are orienteers. We take our compass (or take a risk and leave it at home), and we go west or east or north or south or north-east or…you get the idea. Each decision is just determining a direction to set off from whenever you hit a fork in the road.
This week I made a big direction-changing decision. Like the extra careful person I am, I have been carefully considering which road to take for a while. This time though I was better practiced as an orienteer. I stayed where I was, waiting for my heart compass to point true, so I could realign the mental map I’d drawn up earlier. How did I know I was reading the arrow accurately? All my fears dropped away.
Now I’m a few steps into my next adventure. I’m not sure where I’ll end up. There may be many twists and turns along the way. But man, the view is magnificent already.
10, 000 Joys 