Do you ever wish your life to be different? To be honest with you, I’ve spent the last 17 years of my life wishing that something pretty fundamental was different.
For the first 11-12 of those years, I had no idea what different looked like, I just knew I wanted things to be other than they were. For many of those I felt hopeless, unable to understand why things felt so wrong, and I couldn’t see a glimpse of what feeling right would look like.
I hope you never been there, because truly, from the bottom of my heart… It sucks.
And yet when I look back at those years, there is one resounding theme that keeps showing up. It manifests slightly differently in each situation, but in the end the equations all come out the same.
Not knowing where I wanted to go, other than “not here” meant that I didn’t know what actions to take to change how I felt.
I didn’t have a vision, and in not having a vision, I didn’t know which way to go.
Then in one half year period, a lot of things changed, and to be honest none of them felt comfortable. I suddenly found myself in a position where I no longer had what I didn’t want, but I didn’t know what I wanted, and I had no idea how I was going to survive in the meantime.
No longer could I do the same old things that weren’t making me happy, but doing something different without knowing what that should be was very difficult.
I really didn’t know what I wanted I didn’t even have an idea of how to find out what I wanted, and pretty much had no place of reference to start.
Looking back on the last sentence, I think I just defined the concept of lost.
Since I had no idea of what I should be doing, I just started doing things that were different. One of those involved jumping out of an aircraft at 13,000 feet strapped to a man I just met, hoping that his parachute was going to be big enough for both of us. I was truly and profoundly scared, yet I learned a valuable lesson that day.
That in the moment of being terrified, I could still hold myself in balance and by pushing through the fear I found a level of peace and comfort I didn’t know I could experience.
Almost 5 years ago I began writing this work that has changed me more than I could ever have imagined. When I started, I really had no idea what I was doing, and to be honest the idea of sharing this work publicly made me really uncomfortable.
I still struggle with the concept that anything I might say may be of value to others, and I had a huge amount of imposter syndrome getting started.
And I still get scared about it sometimes, but not as much, and nowhere near as often.
Because the funny thing about doing different things is that every time you take a large step, you change the person who is doing the stepping. In the years since that experience of being profoundly lost, I’ve learned that the only way to change anything is by doing something different, and the more profoundly scared we are to do it, the greater the outcome will be.
The more we overcome our fear, the more that fear comes back as confidence.
I’ve learned that life rarely changes for the better unless we change it, and that the greatest changes come from only doing things that are truly different.
The person who I was at the time that I felt lost is so different from the person I have become. There have been many experiences that have made me uncomfortable, and some that have completely terrified me.
But each time I pushed through and chose to take the step that was different, things have changed in a way that I could not have expected.
I recently did something that was so out of character for the person I was those few years ago that had you told me I would have done it, I would’ve thought you were crazy.
It’s still a little too overwhelming to share right now, maybe one day, but I will share that I was so scared in doing it that I could barely talk. Yet I can tell you that it was one of the most transformative and profound experiences of my life.
And it would never have happened, if I hadn’t tried something different.
My message for you today is that the only way we truly change our life for the better is by doing something that we haven’t done before. The more it scares you, the better chance that it has to help you.
Sometimes our journey towards peace requires a radical change of direction, and sometimes the hardest things to change are the beliefs that we think have to be “just so”.
My hope for you today is that you can see the changes that will bring you happiness, and that you can find the courage to make them.
Because only by doing something different can you experience life at another level.
May you find direction, courage and peace in your journey.
Today and always.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings