- Having a clear vision as well as a way to measure your progress is a total game-changer.
- When you begin to fear that you’re hopelessly off track, you are usually a lot closer than you realized.
- Nature offers infinite forgiveness and teaches us that it is never too late.
Early this June, as the brutal heat in Albuquerque in summertime was still working its way up to a full boil, I loaded up my car with camping gear, books, food, a hefty supply of disinfectant wipes, games and other miscellaneous items. At approximately 7:20 am on a Wednesday morning, I eased out of the driveway and onto the road. My 9 year old son and I were heading east.
Bound for the lush hills of Western Massachusetts where my parents eagerly awaited our arrival, we had a long trip ahead of us. Over a dozen states lay between us and our destination. We traversed this new terrain with relish and delight. There is such a thrill in getting out onto the open road ~ especially after months of anticipation.
Traveling right through the middle of the country in the midst of a pandemic presented new opportunities for ingenuity. We took these challenges on with stride. Plotting out our route a month before, I had looked ahead to daily destinations and reserved campsites along the way.
I lovingly prepared all of our food for the trip ahead of time. I worked it so that we really only needed to stop for fuel, bathroom breaks (taken outdoors as much as possible), and after the first few days, for water as well. OK, at one gas station in Iowa we picked up some Amish-made animal crackers.
We spent 5 days of driving. 2400 or so miles. After staying in Massachusetts for almost 4 weeks we reversed the trip and drove for another 5 days, another 2000+ miles.
One driver (that’s me); one passenger (my 9-year old son). Endless hours of Spotify (quite the range, as usual… from Willis Alan Ramsey to Ray Charles to Faith no More to Talking Heads, Guns N’ Roses to the Dixie Chicks… and pretty much all the non-explicit hip-hop I could think of). Over a thousand pages of printed matter (read by the passenger: lots of Hardy Boys, Pokemon, Roald Dahl).
25 states (in the round trip). A whole lot of very empty roads. Just a handful of wrong turns. A few dozen highly disturbing billboards. Countless stops to pee by the side of many a road. One very memorable, minute-long stream of heavy profanity during a particularly challenging navigational nightmare, in heavy traffic, outside of Chicago on a Friday evening. Pretty much constant levels of sweltering humidity. Hundreds upon hundreds of fireflies. Zero speeding tickets (!!!).
Most of the time it was smooth sailing. In so many ways, the voyage was an absolute delight. Lots of open road to cover, many uneventful hours. Hurtling through space and time with such direction and purpose is so uniquely freeing. It’s such a powerful sense of movement.
But navigating through certain stretches, on at least one or two occasions, I found myself gripped with that distinct anxiety of not knowing where on earth I was, how soon until my exit came up, what my exit even was, and, generally, whether I was on-track or not.
As a holistic health coach, I serve as a guide in many ways. I help people envision where it is that they want to be going. And I help them make small shifts in line with those goals. One step at a time, I guide them along an envisioned path – a path that leads to the next version of themselves.
In this process, the ability to recognize where one is at, with an eye towards where one wants to be, is useful in so many ways. Reference points become essential. They provide a framework. A reality check. A destination… a direction in which to move. Without these points of orientation, it’s easy to become daunted, overwhelmed. There’s so much…. Space… in the middle. Enough to get lost in. So many wrong turns one can take…!
It was on the open road in the middle of America this summer when I realized just how critical it is, on so many levels, to have a destination. A sense of knowing where you’re headed. Not in order to control or force things, or prevent you from being in the present, by any means. But to orient you. To serve as your lighthouse in the fog, so you know where to point your ship. So you don’t get lost in thinking the little things around you are all that’s there.
Having a heartfelt destination is a means to literally pull yourself forward… something to steer towards as you step on the gas, so to speak, and figure your way through the twists and turns.
And yet the destination alone, though potent indeed, is not enough. It struck me along the way how remarkably useful it is to also understand where you have come from.
Having your starting point in mind puts things into some serious perspective. Which leads to the real magic that I came to understand while on this particular road trip, from Albuquerque to Massachusetts (and back!) this summer.
Lesson One:
It is a complete game-changer to have not just a clear vision, but a way to measure our progress.
Noticing the gains creates a natural boost. It gives you something tangible and encouraging to focus on. Taking in that information is an immediate way to put things in context. To break things down into pieces you can actually digest and make sense of. So – hooray for mile markers!
Without some specifics, it’s pretty easy to get lost along the way. To lose our orientation as to where we even are, in the bigger picture, and how that exists in the context of where we’ve been and where we’re heading.
This small shift in perspective reveals the reward of receiving our own progress, rather than dwelling on all we haven’t yet done.
Measuring progress in the health and wellness front could be something like acknowledging that you took one extra walk this week. Going to bed 10 minutes earlier than you did the night before. Or keeping mental note of each specific instance in which you stayed calm and patient when you’d normally have lost your temper. Drinking one more glass of water than the day before. Letting each small success count for something.
Really, it’s about appreciating yourself by seeing the value in anything you’ve accomplished.
What are the mile markers you can start looking out for along your path? How can you celebrate your own progress?
On any journey where there’s room to get lost, we will inevitably find ourselves in moments of panic. Where am I going? What have I gotten myself into?! Where are the signs I truly need to see!!?
Along the thousands of miles of interstates, highways, and state roads, I discovered a fascinating pattern. Just at the moment when I’d allowed my fears of being off-course to completely take over and transform me into absolute nerve-wracked mess, the signs I’d been desperately seeking would inevitably appear. I was on track to merge or get off at the next exit.
Lesson Two:
The indication was clear. I hadn’t been hopelessly lost. Just impatient.
Once I took this in, I chose to embrace this beautiful lesson wholeheartedly. How many times have you allowed yourself to flounder in doubt and worry, anxiety and fear… only to look up from that narrow view and discover that You. Are. In Fact. Exactly. Where. You. Need. To. Be.
And that despite your trepidation, you have all you need and more. Resources you’ve been dismissing. Some of the external things you’d gotten so worked up about had actually worked themselves out. You just needed to hold on for a few.
Part of this is knowing what signs you’re looking for. What signs let you know that you are in line with your goals? With your heart’s desire? What are the cues that remind you that you are indeed on the right path?
Of course, someone who needs to be heading North will see Southbound signs and realize they need to turn around. So ~ if the signs you’re seeing on your current path indicate that you’re really not heading in a direction worth pursuing, you have a choice. Each moment of awareness becomes a personal crossroads. And you do not have to continue down a path where all signs are pointing to an outcome you don’t want. Take the time to envision the destination you do truly desire in order to find a new path. The new path is always there.
And I’m not talking about a destination that’s over half a continent away. My trip this summer was broken down day by day, city by city, state by state, tank by tank. If you can’t see far enough ahead to line up a huge shift, starting small is perfectly legit. How do you want to feel next week? Next month? Line up your new trails from there.
The last gem I uncovered was perhaps the most profound, the most far-reaching. It was an unexpected and gut-wrenching realization. It felt incredibly timely. I hope it speaks to you too.
We passed through hundreds upon hundreds of miles of monoculture sprawl, the creeping stain of industrial agriculture marring the landscape as far as the eye could see. Massive machinery stood awkwardly in the midst of great fields. Carbon copy silo stops eerily lining up, town after town, all the way to the horizon. Ghostly fields of oil and gas wells, pumping incomprehensibly to the rhythm of some unseen drum.
Natural habitats obscured… the unmistakable mark of a one-way system of domination. Imposing itself without permission, extracting incessantly, without understanding, without grace. Without a word of thanks.
As we drove through these surreal spaces for hours on end, I explained the big picture, the oblivion of industrial agriculture’s one-tracked mind, to Keiran, who was disturbed by what he saw as well. He was all ears.
Some of it he’d heard before. But now we were seeing it. We had no choice but to take it in on a different level. The fanatic obsession with fast-food, with corn-syrup, the use of pesticides, the massive redirection of water, the obliteration of habitat and species diversity, the depletion of the topsoil… the industry has the stains of some pretty heavy environmental damage on its hands.
And yet, a few turns off any given stretch of highway, never too far off the beaten path, evidence of nature’s wild intelligence could always be found. It was always there to greet an open eye.
In disturbed soil, certain flowers and medicinal herbs flourish. Try as we may to subjugate and control, in spite of continuous assault and disregard, nature has her eye on the big picture.
Nature will eternally find a path for life to unfold. It’s what she does. It could be in the smallest of spaces, or when given the opportunity, the vastest of expanses. But she forgives, in a fundamental way, by continuing to provide beauty, to generate life and abundance.
Flowers erupt along the roadside. Not part of big agriculture’s master-plan. Plants with wild intelligence ~ full of healing compounds, yet engineered in no laboratory ~ pour out from cracks in the pavement, along truck stops. Wherever we aren’t actively interfering, the diversity of life ceaselessly resumes its sublime work. Forging its own path. Quietly forgiving. Following its primal rhythms of expansion and contraction. Continuing always along on its cycle.
Wild spaces aren’t just in the national parks. They’re at the fringes of deserted parking lots. In little islands of land that someone’s left untended… nature ~ life ~ pours from any space it is given.
Despite all the harm caused, nature continues her path of creating, supporting, sustaining life.
Such is the nature we can see whether we set out down the street and peer into the spaces left alone, or explore the strange, vast landscapes marred by industry. It’s everywhere, on some scale, if we look closely enough. We can learn to appreciate the common patterns in the simplest or most elaborate of life’s creations.
This same nature is within us. No matter how much damage you’ve caused or how much you’ve disregarded your truest needs, how long you’ve deferred the call to treat yourself with more kindness, there is always a new chance. I took this in on a visceral level while observing the unfathomable destruction that industry has wreaked on our beautiful earth ~ and the simultaneous unfolding of life and beauty from the edges of that same destruction.
Which brings me to lesson three:
Nature has an infinite capacity for forgiveness. And with it, ceaselessly offers opportunity upon opportunity to restore vitality and healthy growth.
No matter how much you’ve suffered from self-destructive tendencies, how much pain you’ve borne, how much you’ve failed to heed your innate wisdom, if you’re reading this, you have life ~ you have breath. And with that, a seed of infinite potential. The wild, creative intelligence of nature is alive within you. Continuing to forgive. Seeking a path for life in whatever spaces allow for it within you.
From these adventures, I saw just how abundant nature’s medicine is. In the roadside flowers and outrageous green growth enveloping abandoned buildings. In the light of the moon and the glow of a firefly. In the very air we breathe. It is in her forgiveness. In the opportunities, with every moment, with every breath, that she quietly presents.
If this resonates with you and you’re feeling inspired to seize the opportunity that this very moment is presenting you to steer your course in a new direction, let’s talk. You can schedule a free call here. We’ll map out your goals for growing more of what you want in your life, and connect you with the support you need to truly thrive.
