Tag: Path

The Path of Redirection

Can you recall a time when you wanted something so badly, but it never happened? A time when you wanted A, but you got B? Maybe you were upset and mad at the world for a while and wondering why me?

For the most part, we generally have a direction that we want to go in life. We have a path that we want to take, dreams, goals, and aspirations.

Life will take us on many journeys and they won’t always be the ones that we expect or hope for. While this sounds like a negative outcome, it can end up being the most beautiful thing ever.

A Different Path

The path of redirection may be what we least expect or hope for as we navigate through life. We have this vision for our lives, and we anticipate most of it happening to us as we strive and work hard every day to create the lives that we want.

Being taken off of the path that we were originally on can be discouraging, frustrating, and can leave us questioning so much about ourselves and our lives.

Fate

We all have our own beliefs about life. I believe that we all have a destiny, a designed path that we are to be on. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and somehow, we all end up right where we should be when the time is right.

Our path is unique to us. Traveling down the path of redirection can put us farther away from where we want to be. What we may not realize is that this redirection may lead us to our desires despite it feeling like a huge curveball.

Life Experiences 

There have been so many times in my life when I’ve been redirected. I remember feeling frustrated and lost. I couldn’t understand why I was being taken so far away from what I wanted.

As time moved forward, things started slowly falling into place. Many of the times the desired outcome was reached even if it was the complete opposite way of how I expected it to be. Many of the redirections in my life became some of my biggest blessings!

The Puzzle of Life

Have you ever noticed that our experiences in life fit together like a puzzle? Everything connects to something else as we march on.

Each piece fits together so perfectly. Each piece is important as it becomes a part of the larger picture.

The next time that you find yourself being redirected, hold onto hope that it might be for the best and that the biggest blessing might be just around the corner!

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You Are Leaving a Mark

I had just finished having an early dinner the other day and I decided to walk over to the window that overlooks the deck.

I glanced outside and saw a magnificent sunset. The trees were bare, not a leaf in sight as we head towards the last few weeks of fall and into winter.

My eyes stared at the multi-colored sky and honed in on the beautiful orange color. The branches were so open without the leaves and there it was…my eye caught a bird’s nest.

I Looked Deeper

I got lost in thought as I examined this bird’s nest. It was large and nestled safely in the branches. The nest was empty because it is so cold here, and many of the birds have flown south for the winter.

My mind started to wander. At one point in the spring or summer, a bird created a nest to live in and to have its babies in. The nest was built with love and care and served an amazing purpose.

Given that the weather is so cold here and that there are no leaves left on the trees to hide the nest safely, it appeared as though the nest is abandoned.

Flooded with Emotions 

There I was, peering out of the window, staring at this nest that a bird created many months ago. At one point, this nest was thriving with babies and today it lay abandoned as winter approaches.

Even though most of the birds migrate away from this area once the weather gets cold, they leave a trail behind them.

In this case, a beautiful nest was left behind. One that once represented love, safety, and new life. The birds may be gone, but the beauty and meaning live on.

You Matter 

Every act of kindness that you show and every word that you choose to speak or write lives on in some way. Others will not forget your kind words in times of despair. Your writing is and will continue to impact other people who come across it, even many years down the line.

Every day that you live, you are leaving a mark. Beauty lives on and reminds us of where we have been. You may have moved, changed jobs, or left a relationship, but the impact that you made is never lost.

YOU are important and you matter. YOU are making a difference in this world. The days come and go, but the mark that you leave on this Earth will forever remain.

You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide

I am sure that most of us have been in a situation where we were unhappy with life. Maybe we didn’t like our jobs, were stuck in a relationship that we didn’t see going anywhere, or possibly we didn’t like our social circle because we felt as if we didn’t belong.

For those of you that were in situations like these, how did it make you feel? What was your first instinct telling you how to handle the situation?

Natural Response

One of the reactions when faced when a tough situation in life is to flee. It goes back to the fight-or-flight response in Psychology. As we experience hardship, we either tend to stay and fight, or our adrenaline starts to rush, and we flee to escape the perceived threat.

We want to flee to avoid having to feel negative emotions, we flee as a way of avoiding experiences, even avoiding ourselves.

Question for You

Think of a time when you felt so upset and discouraged that you wanted to get up right then and there and leave. You wanted to pack up your office because you couldn’t stand your job anymore, you wanted to run away and hide from your significant other because you felt that you two grew apart instead of together. Think of a time when you felt like an outsider, that even with friends around, you still felt alone in this world. Did you flee?

Many of you did and that is a normal response. Even though it’s normal, it may not be the best way to approach these situations because instead of facing the issue and growing from it, we chose to run away. It felt right at the time, maybe even taking off some of the anxiety, but what ended up happening?

Noticeable Patterns

After we ran from the situation, we felt much better, but as time goes on, the past usually comes back to haunt us.

The key is to look at the issue at hand and see where you can learn from it. If there is some sort of inner conflict, then these types of situations that make us want to flee can give us great insight into what we can improve on.

Communication

Much of life and life’s problems revolve around communication or lack thereof. Sometimes we may feel as though we do not have the strength, or even the skills to solve what is happening to us, so we just decide to flee to make our problems instantly disappear.

I have learned this the hard way, the problems seem to have magically disappeared until, weeks, months, or years later they resurface again because they were not addressed the first time.

Try This

Those situations that make you feel like you would just rather run away than deal with it can be our greatest teachers. Try to live more authentically and see how you can fix your life circumstances. Work within yourself to discover that you have the strength and power to face any issue head-on.

I want to make an important note that in certain situations, we absolutely must flee. Those situations include those that affect our safety etc.

The Takeaway

Life tends to find us, we can move to a different state, change jobs, or even hunt for that “perfect” someone, but what we have not corrected from our past will eventually show up in our future. We may flee, but life follows. We are still the same person inside.

I believe that life is one big test and that we are here to learn many lessons. The lessons will keep repeating themselves over and over until we have learned how to master them. Pay attention to the things that make you want to run and hide, address them so that you have power over them!

I Took a Walk Today

It was a gorgeous sunny day, not too hot with a nice breeze. I decided to take a walk, being in nature and taking walks is one of my absolute favorite things to do and something that I do very often. I love the way that nature makes me feel and I get excited not knowing what I might stumble upon during my little journey.


I choose to take a path that I haven’t taken before, I kept walking and walking, and I was passing large open fields and houses with people in their backyards enjoying this summer day. I found a little sidewalk that I decided to follow and lo and behold I found myself at a middle school.
I looked around at the school from the outside. I could see trailers and a bunch of school buses in the parking lot waiting for summer break to end in a few weeks. Farther down, I saw a basketball court and a track field. I couldn’t stop smiling. I found myself taking a trip down memory lane.


When I was in elementary school, I was very outgoing, you could call me a class clown, I loved to make people laugh and would go to great lengths to do so. Going from a smaller elementary school to a very large secondary school for my middle school years was very challenging for me. I became very shy socially, the teen years had me questioning my self-esteem as a lot of us go through, I also had my fair share of bullies. Next came high school, a few of those years were challenging as well, but senior year was an absolute blast as I came out of my shell and became the outgoing girl that I was back in elementary school.


As with most people, I had a lot of not-so-fond memories of middle and high school, but I also had some incredible memories, ones that will stick with me for a lifetime. As I walked past this middle school, I was flooded with memories. I was truly reminiscing about my school days and it left me feeling so uplifted. Despite all of the negative memories of my last few years of school, there were a lot of good memories that I carry with me.


I was amazed that the mere sight of this school that I ran into could bring back so much happiness, could bring me back to a place of much simpler times when our whole world revolved around school, unaware of what the real world had in store. The memories started flooding in and there I stood in a moment of bliss.


I started to recall the sound of the bell in-between classes, and how excited we were to hear that bell, especially when school let out for the day. I remembered the days when I used to try to keep up with everyone running the mile on the track, I had to walk half of it most of the time! The lunch tables where I sat, even if I was alone as I adjusted to a new school or was just socially distant. Carrying a larger-than-life backpack filled with books, trapper keepers, a TI-83, spiral notebooks, and Ticonderoga pencils. I found myself thinking of old friends and peers and how much they have influenced my life today.


The memories didn’t stop there, I found myself smiling as I remembered running trying to catch the bus as it drove away without me, dressing up for yearbook pictures, and getting all of my friends to sign my yearbook. The words “have a great summer!” are forever etched in my mind. Last, but not least, my locker was a little piece of comfort, a familiar corner in an unfamiliar place.


I love taking a trip down memory lane, it’s amazing how the sight of something can trigger such fond memories and emotions. Go for a walk today, get out of the house, and the office, take a break mentally and see what journey you find yourself on. Not only will this walk benefit your mind and body, but you never know what is out there waiting for you to discover! One little walk made my entire day filled with happy memories. I love anything nostalgic; I find it so good for the soul.

A Winding Path

Life as we know it has many ups and downs. It will take us on many adventures along the way with many roadblocks, detours, and victories. Life is full of many unknowns, some good, some bad, some in-between. One thing for sure, it will keep us on our toes.

There are many beliefs about life, everyone has their own viewpoint. For me, I believe that everyone has been given a certain life path to help them grow and learn while here in the physical world. While I believe there can be deviations to our path, for the most part, I believe that we are destined to go through certain things and that our path is unique to us and designed for us to achieve the optimum growth that we possibly can. Others may disagree, this is just my belief and opinion!

When we were younger, we most likely had a vision of how life would unfold for us, or how we had hoped for it to unfold. Maybe there are some of you who’s lives have turned out exactly how you expected it to, but for a lot of us, I feel like the journey has been quite the opposite of what we expected. I know for me, my journey has been far from what I had anticipated.

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We have always been told to try hard not to worry about the future, but to focus on the present instead. The future that we try to plan for now may look very different once we get there. Life and circumstances are ever-changing, we could be worrying about something that will never happen, or that may happen, but in a completely different context.

No one likes to face battles, darkness, or suffering and sadly all of these things are a part of life. The beauty of these hard times is the joy that we receive from overcoming these challenging moments in life, the feeling of growth, strength, and maturation. Life is going to throw a lot of things at us and our strength is what will help us conquer it all.

Each of your lives is very precious and very special. The path that you have been given will for sure be a winding one, but my hope is that you will see the beauty in the path that has been uniquely laid out for you!

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