The Imperfect Journey

Every journey is its own entity. Your journey won’t be the same as your best friend’s, your sister’s or your colleague’s. Unfortunately, that isn’t the way society sees it. We’re constantly pitted against each other, as if this life is a contest and our friends are our competitors. That couldn’t be further from the truth. So that’s why this week I want to focus on how you view your journey. I want you start embracing it as an imperfect journey that may be filled with bumps along the way, but it is beautifully bent and never broken beyond repair.

First, lets rewrite the script you have written in your head about yourself who you should be. You know what I’m talking about. How you should be further along in your career. Or 15 pounds lighter. And have a better marriage. Or different friends.

Take a moment and think about the negative things you tell yourself about where you are in your journey and how it isn’t… enough. Write those things down, and look at that list. Now take a moment and consider this: how has rehashing these negative words and phrases affected your life? Has it encouraged you to make positive steps towards change or has it left you in a funk you can’t shake? After you’re done answering those questions for yourself, rip that paper up and throw it away. You are finished with the negativity!

The imperfect journey isn’t a mistake-filled path of failure. It’s not something to be ashamed of. And it’s definitely not something to be compared to the others’ around you who are seemingly doing better than you. It’s your own individual road to living your authentic life and being your authentic self.

My journey was far from perfect. I’ve been in debt – massive debt – and have been a slave to my own financial journey. I had a job I wasn’t crazy about, and I was surrounded by people who were varying degrees of miserable. But guess what? I turned it around. I soul searched, I listened to myself, and I found what was my ideal life.

And I still proactively seek out that life today. That’s the thing about this imperfect journey: there isn’t necessarily a destination. It’s constantly asking yourself if you feel balanced, loved, fulfilled, cared for, and a host of other things that are important to you.

But do you know what’s best about this imperfect journey? We are the authors of it. Don’t write a script or story filled with negative feelings, encounters and results. Speak into existence what you want on a daily basis, whether that’s through affirmations or by reading out loud the goals and dreams you have for yourself.

Action step

Don’t take for granted what’s around you. No matter where you are in your life – how great or awful you perceive things to be – you are in the ideal place to not only make changes, but to thrive. And do you know how I know that? Because you are seeking it out. I don’t believe in mistakes or coincidences; if something is in your heart to pursue, it’s there because you are supposed to be actively working towards it.

Spend time over the next several weeks treating the people around you how you not only want others to treat you, but how you want to treat yourself. No beating yourself up for small (or big) mistakes anymore. Embrace your imperfect journey by putting out into the world what you would like to get back. Whatever it is you want your life to be filled with, start seeking that out by saying you want it and by gifting whatever that is to others.

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