Be careful of a bad guide. Some guides offer their services, but they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Make sure they show you some evidence that they know how to get to where you’re wanting to go.
A coach could be a guide, but more often a coach is like a companion with a flashlight of their own. They can help point out blind spots and light up things you’re not seeing, but they don’t always know the best path to your specific destination. Instead, they help you find the path for yourself – which can be an empowering way to take the journey.
A great guide would be a mentor who’s been to your destination, possibly even multiple times from multiple different pathways. At the very least, they have one solid path to get to your destination.
Now granted, maybe they climbed up a rock face to get there, and you don’t have the same strength and skillset to do this. It might be wise then to find a mentor who was similar in strength and skill when they started as you are now. Nevertheless, almost any good mentor will get you further along than you might get on your own.
Setting Your Intention
Before you start your journey, you must set your intention.
How do you wish to play the game? How do you wish to be on the journey?
There will be many paths to your destination. If you don’t decide the way you’re going to take the journey, you might meander around conflicted with so many different paths to choose from.
You must also get the courage to actually get up and leave your current departure point.
Consider…
Why do you wish to make the journey to this destination?
What will life be like in another year, or five years if things keep going the way they’ve been going currently?
How will your life look in another 10 years the way things have been going?
Remember, each decision, every choice, big or small, including the reason for leaving, may affect the outcome of the journey. Also remember, at any point in time, you may change your intentions. What motivates you now doesn’t have to be what motivates you later. Your way of being now doesn’t have to be your way of being later. You always have a choice, including the choice to make a new choice.
Now you need to know what’s inside the WTF zone so it doesn’t catch you by surprise.
What’s Inside WTF
Stepping Stones, Winding Roads, and Big Leaps
The path you follow could be solid or a bit rocky. Many times you’ll have areas where it’s stepping stones just hopping to one point, catching your balance, and then hopping to the next point. This is how most of the journey is.
Many times you’ll be on a path that winds around a bend, and you can’t see what’s on the other side of it. Don’t worry. Just keep looking at what’s right in front of you now, and you’ll get to where the path leads. Like driving a car at night, you can make a journey of hundreds of miles into an unknown darkness just by seeing the path that’s lit up right in front of you.
However, sometimes you come to big leaps. You might be tempted to think, “Welp, this is the end of the road. I have to jump, and I’m not sure I can make this jump.” You’ll never get to your destination, though, if you don’t take a leap of faith from time to time.
The good news is, you can be somewhat ready for them when they show up. When you’re on your path, challenge yourself to jump along. Build up your strength. Do some exercise even when you don’t “need to.” This way, when you come across a big leap, you’ve strengthened your muscles and your courage.
Give yourself challenges willingly throughout life, and you’ll be willing to conquer challenges thrust upon you by life.
The ultimate way to build the courage for leaps of faith is to remember, “When have I made a leap of faith before and it worked out?”
You’ll find that if you go back in your past, there are many times you can recall doing what seemed impossible – and yet here you stand. You can look back and consider that 10 years ago you weren’t nearly as capable as you are now, yet still somehow you made it here. You overcame what seemed like impossible jumps before, so you can do it again. Let this acknowledgement give you the courage to take your next leap of faith. Perhaps something is supporting you during this leap you don’t even realize is there…
Roadblocks and Obstacles
From time to time you’ll come across roadblocks and obstacles. Perhaps your map or guide prepared you for them, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter, just know right now that they’re going to come up.
The first way you can get through a roadblock or obstacle is to break through it. Perhaps get a few companions to help. Remember, you may just need to ask. It might not break right away, but it doesn’t hurt to try – unless it’s like solid concrete and you punch it and break your hand. #DontBeADumbass #UseCommonSense
The forceful approach may build up some strength. You could actually get pretty damn good at just busting through obstacles. The key to effortlessness is relentless effort. If you relentlessly practice breaking through any obstacle that comes your way, through great effort, eventually obstacles become almost effortless to overcome.
But you may wish to ask yourself, “Is it always wise to spend hours, day, or even years busting through an obstacle if I can just take five minutes to walk around it?”
You’ll have to decide for yourself how you wish to choose to approach each obstacle, for each obstacle will be different.
The second way to handle something blocking your path is to simply find an alternative path or way around it. Realize that there are many paths to your destination. There are many different paths to the peak of the mountain. It’s OK to quit on the path you are taking without quitting on the destination. In other words, don’t think one single path is too legit to quit. #SeeWhatIDidThere #MCHammerReferenceInSelfHelp #ImWinningSoHardRightNow
Quit on the details, but not on the destination. Be willing to change your path without changing your priority.
Loop Arounds
Sometimes your path won’t make sense. Your destination is due north, but yet if you go straight north, it’s a trap. If you head north at the crossroad, the path winds around and takes you south, away from where you’re going and back off the mountain.
Sometimes where you need to go is in the complete opposite direction of the peak. You follow the “slingshot” trail that heads south for a moment, but then winds back around to take you back north towards the mountain top.
You’ll realize, “I can’t just head straight to where I want to go. I need to understand where the trails lead over time.”
Base Camp
You may be tempted, after making progress for a while, to keep heading straight up to the top of the mountain. Yet if you go too quickly, you’ll lose steam and burn out.
What you may need to do is head up for a bit, get acclimated to the higher altitude, and then come back down to base camp to rest up a bit.
This will teach you patience. It will teach you not to push beyond your physical capabilities. At times, it will teach you not to push beyond your emotional capabilities. Your desire to get to the top quickly is understandable, but foolish if not kept it check. Going too far too quickly may end up destroying you.
If you find it hard to breathe, you may ask, “Do I need to head back down temporarily, and make a base camp until I’m restored again to continue this journey?”
Settlements
As you continue on your journey, you will come across settlements. These are comfortable little spots that you may wish to take a break in. However, be warned, you may find this turns from a quick rest stop into a permanent settlement.
You see the journey is long and hard, and these settlements are cozy and comfortable. What’s especially an issue at these settlements are settlers. Fellow travelers who’ve given up on their journey.
They’ll start to say things to you like, “Oh, that place you want to go to, you can’t make it. We’ve tried. It’s just a bunch of BS. Anyone who sells you on the idea
of getting to the peak is just a scammer. You don’t want to go back out there. It’s nice here. It’s comfortable here. We like you here. Here, have a beer and stay with us.”
This may be a very tempting offer to settle with the other settlers. The settlement is nice, albeit nothing to write home about. However, it’s definitely more comfortable than the sometimes lonely journey traveling towards your destination. Maybe you were a little arrogant to think you could get to the peak. Isn’t that pride? Isn’t pride “bad?”
Now you have a choice. Do you wish to stay with the settlers, or continue the journey?
Should you decide to continue the journey, be warned… the settlers won’t like that you are leaving them. You are pretty awesome after all, and gosh darnit people like you. Can you blame them for wanting you to stay?
Yet their friendliness turns to bitterness if you leave them. They’ll shout at you as you walk away, “You’re an idiot! You fool! You’re going to get yourself killed out there!”
What you might find, though, is as you make your way out of the settlement, a few other settlers decide to venture out behind you. Inspired by your courage, they say to themselves, “You know what, I had given up and settled, but seeing this person continuing their journey has inspired me to continue my journey. Maybe there is a way to the peak after all.”
Perhaps even a few of the settlers ask to join you. Remember though, choose your companions wisely. You’re depending on them to point out the pitfalls. They can be the very reason you make it or the very reason you fall.
Robbers
Now at this point, you might be patting yourself on the back for your bravery, not letting the settlers get to you. Just when you start thinking, “Those settlers don’t know what they’re talking about,” you get whacked on the back.
It’s a robber, and he steals a bunch of your shit.
You can be prepared for this ahead of time.
Do you keep some extra food stored away in spots along your journey you can backtrack to and snag?
Do you know how to protect yourself and your assets?
Despite your best preparations, though, sometimes robberies happen. You may not always choose whether a robber gets you, but you can choose how you prepare for it and how you respond to it.
If you get robbed, do you hang your head in shame and return to a nearby settlement, too fearful to return to your journey?
Or do you still venture boldly forward saying, “This robber can take my belongings from me, but they can never take my choice from me to continue going forward. I’m choosing not to let them have power over how I run my life, but rather I’m keeping this power for myself. I choose to go forward greatly no matter what setbacks I have, for what looks like a setback may actually be a setup for a breakthrough if I get the lesson from this experience.”
Voices
As you venture on the journey, you may hear voices come from deep within the woods beyond where you can see. These voices are sometimes helpful, sometimes harmful. Some may try to get you to go off your path, while others will steer you in the right direction.
You’re never quite sure what to make of these voices. You may wish to learn to distinguish the voices. You notice that the loud voices seem to be the most dangerous. There’s a still, soft, subtle, quiet voice you hear, that always seems to be steering you right.
Are the voices actually in your head? Are they outside of you? Are they voices of fear? Voices of wisdom? Voices of past conditioning? Echoes bouncing through the forest from a movie playing in a nearby settlement? Real people hiding in the woods messing with you, or perhaps actually trying to help?
Be careful of the voices you listen to. They may be what saves you or destroys you.
The Demon
There is one thing that you must be extremely careful of – the demon.
The demon has one purpose – to destroy you. The demon is named “Death.”
One may trip and fall off a ledge in WTF. The demon will there at the bottom to catch their fall. Into the hands of death this person will fall – a sad but sobering reality.
No amount of sunshine-and-rainbows thinking makes the demon not exist. It’s there, it’s real, and you know others who’ve fallen victim to the demon in WTF. This lingering thought that there’s a real demon that may actually kill you is why WTF is so scary.
“Fear” sometimes gets mistakenly labeled as “false evidence appearing real.” There is nothing “false” about the reality of death. Fear exists because it’s protecting you from a potential reality – death and destruction.
This is your dilemma…
Should this fear consume you, you’ll never reach your destination. You’d never venture out into WTF for fear the demon will get you.
Should you ignore this fear’s warning when the demon is lurking nearby, you may find yourself carelessly and foolheartedly falling into the clutches of the demon.
Fear may be the very thing that stops you from reaching your destination, and yet it may be the very thing that keeps you alive on your journey to your destination.
Should this fear not be balanced with something else, it will paralyze you. A paralyzed person is an easy target for the demon. The very thing that’s trying to save you from destruction may be the thing that brings it about.
What will get you to act in spite of this fear?
What is the other choice besides fear?
Why are you making this journey to begin with? Out of fear, or something else? Or a mix of feelings? Is there ever just one motivation?
Reaching Your Destination
If you actually step out and take the journey instead of sitting in a comfortable settlement talking about how “I could totally make the journey but uhh, you know, I just don’t really feel like it ‘cause I mean I have nothing to prove or anything…”
If you persevere in spite of roadblocks, robbers, and proud settlers…
If you make both the small steps and the great leaps of faith…
You will reach your destination. It will be glorious. You will be proud.
Now you have a choice.
You may choose to bask in your glory and make a settlement of your new destination. To settle at the peak of this mountain. To enjoy the wonderful new experience of being in a destination that’s even more amazing than where you departed from.
Or you may look around… and see off in the distance another mountain to climb.
From this high altitude, you get a glimpse of what might be an even more amazing destination. Maybe you just get quickly bored of your newfound destination or realize it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be in your imagination.
Do you settle, or do you climb a new peak?
Do you choose something else altogether?
The answer depends on the intention you set.
Back Into WTF
While many will find comfort with their newfound destination and prefer to stay at the top of the mountain, others may venture back into WTF to climb the next mountain. They say to themselves, “If I’ve done it once, I can do it again!” They love the feeling of pride and significance of reaching the top of mountains.
They’ll repeat the same overall process, but this time, they may find the path this journey takes them on is more challenging. This time settling becomes more tempting as they can now just simply brag to the fellow settlers about their accomplishments and relive their glory days without needing a new mountain to climb.
But if they’re motivated by the growth they’ll experience, then the challenge, rather than being off-putting, will provide a tempting allure to become even greater. They’ll have something to prove to themselves about what their potential truly is, and it doesn’t matter if others recognize it or not.
Others may wish to venture out to WTF not to climb the next mountain, but simply to explore what’s out there. Perhaps exploring lands beyond what can even be seen at the peak of the mountain. Perhaps swimming in lakes, bungee jumping off cliffs, and getting #TurntUp at some t
otally dope jungle parties. Perhaps coming across hidden temples and finding the whole world of WTF fascinating with its never-ending exciting variety of new discoveries.
Still others will venture back into WTF to hang out with other travelers. Perhaps it’s lonely at the top and they want some friends to join them so that they feel connected and can share the experience of being at the peak of the mountain.
Or perhaps they help others get to the peak themselves because they remember what it was like to be in a settlement and have feelings of hopeless resignation. They know the people there secretly yearn to reach of the top of this mountain, but no one showed them the way. They wish to contribute something to their fellow travelers by proclaiming, “I’ve been to the top of the mountain! I’ve come back down to show you the way so all people from this day forward may reach its peak!”
Finally, there are those who do not wish to play just one single game. Since we can change our intentions and what we make matter the most at any point in time, some may do a little of each of these things. They adventure for a while with no particular destination, just enjoying the exciting things they come across. Then they may decide to take on a new mountain to climb to grow themselves and sense that feeling of accomplishment. After a while they may settle comfortably but then eventually grow restless. They decide they want to make a contribution and start creating maps of what they’ve discovered in WTF and become a part-time WTF tour guide in their later years.
There are many ways to play the game. There are many intentions that can be set. The journey of WTF is a journey of choice.
How do you choose to journey? How do you wish to be in your adventures in WTF?
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