Are you trying to figure out what to do next in your life? Have you created spreadsheets and lists, detailed out options and their pros and cons? And after doing all that still can’t figure out what to move towards?
I have many clients who arrive with this predicament. They’ve done the work and analysis, but still can’t decide what to do with all of it.
It’s not for lack of effort nor intelligence. These are highly functional and intelligent people but yet still they cannot make sense of it.
If you’re one of those people, may I offer that you have done enough THINKING about it and that you need something else?
How about some WAYFINDING:
Before the invention of the compass, sextant and clocks, or more recently, the satellite-dependent Global Positioning System (GPS), Pacific Islanders navigated open-ocean voyages without instruments, using instead their observations of the stars, the sun, the ocean swells, and other signs of nature for clues to direction and location of a vessel at sea.
(Source: Polynesian Wayfinding)
How might that apply to your situation?
OK so you’ve exhausted all the technical, organizational, reasoning based methods. What else haven’t you incorporated yet?
As the definition mentions, what other signs of nature are you not taking notice of? Things like your intuition and how you feel. Wisdom (not knowledge!) that you’ve accumulated over the years that you might be discounting or ignoring, or even fearful or refusing to see.
What if you were to deploy some of that wayfinding in your life?
With my clients, we always go through and acknowledge the work they’ve done to date. Then usually, it’s the intuition, feelings, and wisdom that are missing. We bring those back into their awareness and clarity comes quickly. Certainty comes when we deploy all parts of ourselves instead of only the brain.
Then comes the journey. Polynesian navigators would depart and then watch the waves, clouds, and stars for the messages they give them step by step and adjust their path as the journey goes on. They push off shore without any kind of map. Just trusting that what messages they receive along the way from nature is guiding them in the right way.
How might that work in your life? Stepping onto a path without firm clarity on the path itself, or even where it leads?
Is a little more wayfinding what you need? What if you were to start on your next life journey, with your intuition, feelings, and wisdom to guide you alongside all that knowledge you’ve just piled up? Would your next step in life be more certain or you?
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