Oh, what a tangled web we weave… when we don’t really know who we are, what we want or what is truly right for us.
How does this tangled web get woven you ask? Good question. It’s a question I have often asked myself in all its various forms.
- How did I get here?
- Why does this keep happening?
- Did I take wrong turn somewhere?
I DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!
It’s so very frustrating and a war I have been battling within myself for some years that had no particular starting point or trigger, but just grew over time as feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration slowly crept up on me.
I started asking myself these questions.
How did I get here?
Well, this was fairly easy to answer. I took the sensible path, a path that is a combination of what I thought was expected of me and what I thought I needed to do to give myself what I believed I needed – security – via a safe, sensible career, a roof over my head and the funds to travel. It was a conscious choice. Objectively it was the right choice as I did achieve those things. However, I knew that just lying beneath the surface I had made a sacrifice. Of what, I wasn’t sure. I just knew it was costing me something, but I was prepared to pay that price. And so I did.
Why does this keep happening?
This was a little trickier to answer. As you go through your life, you may start to see repeating situations occur and if you have a questioning mind like I do, inevitably you ask yourself ‘why’ (one of my favourite questions by the way). That’s all very well, but what happens when you can’t come up with a rational explanation for why you continuously come across so-called friends who do the wrong thing by you or why ‘difficult’ colleagues choose to inflict their ‘difficult’ behaviour on you and all you can come up with is ‘I’m the common denominator here’.
To be clear, this is about observing what is going on in your life, seeing the patterns which are ultimately about ‘lessons’ (we’ll get to that), and the part I played. This is what I had to get crystal clear about.
Did I take wrong turn somewhere?
This was by far the hardest question to answer and something I continue to ask myself regularly as I’m constantly working on coming to truly believe that there are no wrong turns in life. There are choices, always choices, and we make our choices to the best of our knowledge and ability at the time we are making them.
I do believe that we are always in the right place at the right time no matter how challenging or downright wrong it may feel. I do believe everything happens for a reason. I have experienced that even when things don’t feel like they are going to turn out right, they always turn out the way that is best for you, again even though it seems challenging or wrong at the time. Hindsight, in its 20/20 beauty, will eventually show you this.
In my quest to answer this question, it has pushed me to turn to myself, to trust myself and to trust and have faith in the course of ‘life’. This requires an inimitable amount of faith in you and the choices you make.
Take a step back to have a look at the tapestry of your life that you have weaved together. Take in the whole picture – do you like what you see?
The picture is a tapestry of the choices you have made where you had the power and the opportunity to make a choice.
I’m looking at what I’ve weaved together – there are some tightly woven plaits, some loose threads, a few knots here and there among the different coloured threads. I’m taking the time now to unpick a few of the knots and pick up some of the loose threads to see what new tapestry I can weave together. And this time, I am doing this consciously, with intention, carefully choosing what I want my tapestry to look like.
First, I must untangle myself.
Be intentional with your choices