Is life trying to tell you something?

If you're anything like me, you've probably had a picture in your head of how your life was supposed to go. Where you'd be. What you'd be doing. Who you'd be doing it with.

And when things start to look different from that picture, it's easy to feel like something went wrong.

I've had my plans fall apart a few times. Every time, it felt like a setback. Like I was getting further away from where I was supposed to be. And I've spent a lot of energy trying to figure out how to get back on track as fast as possible.

But looking back, some of those moments ended up pointing me somewhere better. I just couldn't see it at the time.

I think we can be quick to call something the worst thing that could've happened before we've seen what comes after it. When you're in the middle of something hard, all you can really see is what you lost and how far it feels from what you wanted.

A lost job feels like falling behind. A breakup feels like losing the future you had planned. Not getting the opportunity you wanted feels like you missed your shot. An illness puts everything on hold. Or you spend years building a career, only to realize it doesn't make you happy anymore.

And for a while, it really might feel like everything's going wrong.

But you don't know where it leads yet.

Losing that job might push you toward work you never would've considered. A breakup might make room for someone who fits you better. Moving somewhere new might introduce you to people you never would've met. Not getting the opportunity you wanted might be what gets you to create your own. An illness might change how you think about your time and what you want to do with it.

None of that makes the hard parts less hard. Some things just hurt, and it's okay to let them hurt for a while. But it's worth staying open to the idea that this might not be the end of the story.

I've started to believe that life is usually trying to tell me something in those moments. Sometimes something not working out points me in a different direction. Sometimes it shows me what I actually want. Sometimes it just forces me to slow down.

And it's usually not obvious at first. It might be the thing I can't stop thinking about. The relief I feel when a door closes that I was scared to walk away from. The idea that keeps coming back no matter how many times I push it aside.

But I only notice those things when I'm not rushing to get everything back to how it was.

That's the part I'm still working on. When something goes wrong, my first instinct can still be to fix it. To make a new plan right away so I don't have to sit in the uncertainty.

So I'm trying to be a little slower to call something a setback. To give it some time. To pay attention to where life might be taking me instead of fighting my way back to the old plan.

I still like having a sense of where I'm headed. I'm just learning to hold onto it a little looser.

When life talks, I'm trying to listen.

Keep going,
Kiel