Starting a New Journey

In my last post, I mentioned how I’m rebranding myself and expanding my writing to include more inspirational content. This is a new journey for me even though I’ve studied spiritual and psychological topics for years now. It’s a scary thing to share my personal thoughts and commentary for others to receive and either praise or critique. And that’s what I want to talk about in this post. New paths in life are always scary at first but worth it if we feel it is the right decision for us at a particular point in our life. 

If you’ve ever heard of Tarot card reading, you may have heard of the Fool’s Journey. It’s essentially an explanation of the spiritual journey we take through any endeavor in life. Now, regardless of what spiritual or religious beliefs you practice, I believe this “journey” applies to all of us. 

There are several moments where we feel like we’re starting a new journey in life. A few years ago, this happened on a mass scale after the pandemic. But beside that moment, it happens when we enter a new relationship or marriage, when a relationship ends in divorce or when a death has occurred, when we graduate college or high school, and enter the workforce or a new field of study. These are just examples of the many moments where we’ll enter a new path in life. Sure, we can use all the wisdom we’ve gained from others either through first-hand accounts or research, but the journey will be unique to you, especially if it’s your first time going through it. 

Now there may be times where we’ll be resistant toward a decision in our life. Most of the time, this comes from a fear of change. Most of us do things out of habit and it can be very uncomfortable to change. This could stem from being uncertain about the future or a lack of direction. You may like whatever lifestyle or habit you have and the realization that it will change makes you angry and frustrated. But life is about change. We’re constantly growing physically, if not mentally. The world is constantly changing from the seasons and weather patterns to the social and political influences around you. My belief is that living is about adapting, which understandably, can be very hard to do. 

I read a great book years ago called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. I actually found the book when I was going through a particularly rough time in my life, as your 20s can be. In the book she writes what she calls the “Five Truths about Fear”. Here’s one that stuck out to me:

“Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of hopelessness.”

This stuck out to me because I’ve been on both sides of this statement. The deep dread when you fear the life you’ve built will come crumbling down one day. Maybe you’ve put all your hope and finances in this one dream that will make you rich or successful or more attractive or whatever the goal is. This is one of the reasons I went to grad school. I figured if I left my hometown, I would find a greater sense of purpose. But I ended up broke with a large amount of student debt and still unclear of what direction I wanted to take. Now I’ll talk in another post about the flaw of society forcing us to have our life figured out by age 25. But it wasn’t until I sat down and really worked through my fears and emotional traumas that I was able to find a sense of true purpose for my life. 

There are many people who are afraid to make a change in their life, even if they know it will be for the best. However, I believe that there are some decisions we make hastily only to end in disastrous mistakes. Let’s look at some examples.  

Are you jumping into this new marriage or relationship too soon without talking about what you both want and expect out of this relationship? Have you made sure that you both agree on foundational aspects like living situation, finances, and future children? College costs a lot in America, so have you thought the finances before signing for a student loan? This is something I wish someone had adequately talked me through before acquiring a lot of school debt as well. 

And then some of these changes we rush through are simply because of societal expectations. College and marriage are two big ones. And while there’s nothing wrong with getting married and furthering your education, I feel many people jump into those life paths without truly considering what they want. Do you even want a long-term relationship, and do you want a serious emotional commitment such as marriage? Can you go to a community college in state or is that private out-of-state college really where you want to go? And can you afford it? 

So there are two sides of the same coin with starting a new life path. First is fighting through the fear of starting the journey, and second is gathering enough information so that you’re taking the journey with the least amount of risk. This could prevent potential mistakes and pitfalls. 

So the question becomes how do you know if you’re ready? This is something I’ll dive into on the next post, but for now, listen to your intuition. Are you avoiding a costly mistake, or are you excited for it but dreading the unknown and uncertain? Do you need to do more research, or are you dragging and stalling? The latter could be a form of self sabotage. But again, only you can know what is right for you. 

Believe that you’re making the best decision that you can come up with for this stage of your life. Few of us get it right the first time, and even then we may realize we don’t like this new experience all that much and decide to do something else instead. Perhaps this is a stepping stone and a moment of learning for you. That’s okay. Life is about trying new experiences and seeing what you like and what you don’t like. I’ll take another quote from Susan Jeffers book: 

“Avoid blaming yourself for not being in control. You are doing the best you can, and you are on your way to reclaiming your power.” 

This is from a section in the book called “Seven Ways to Reclaim Your Power”. I think it’s very important for us to not beat ourselves up for past mistakes and decisions. Trust that you’ve done the best you could at that point in your life. Take it as a lesson learned and use that knowledge in your next step in life.