The 3 Paths
In my life I’ve found that I have 3 distinct paths. The first one loops back and doesn’t go anywhere, the second is well walked by others and straight forward and the third has a lot of obstacles and unknowns—but peaks my curiosity.
The First Path: Curiosity Loops
The first 25 or so years of my life I’ve gotten to know the first path quite well. It doesn’t lead anywhere other than back to the beginning. The path doesn’t go long enough to get to a destination, but is an excellent path if you’re just peruising around and seeing what’s out there—without committing too much to one of the harder paths.
This path has been exploration, randomness, scatteredness, a lack of follow through and commitment, but has also been a lot of fun to figure out where my limits, tendencies and curiosities are.
While walking it, I’ve found that I love creating, selling, designing, imagining and having something that has enough meat on it to consistently work on. I need a big project that is creative, where I get to learn and that has impact of some sort. On this path, although, the impact part would never come because I would get back to the start and start a new loop. This is where the other paths come in.
The first path, you can get make a lot of progress quickly, but eventually things get hard and that’s where impact starts. But, this is usually where the first path loops back to the start—to try something that’s easier again. Aka, restarting.
The Second Path: Following Through
The second path is defined by learning how to walk a path that is more linear, but leads to an outcome that I’m seeking. It takes longer, requires more consistency and commitment—but it also has less ambiguity and fun as the first path. But, this is a lesson that must be learned: you must walk the path long enough to see where it leads and reap the benefits.
It’s not always the most exciting path and can feel mundane, but it’s one that sets up clear targets over a period of time, so one can build up self-efficacy, trust in oneself and integrity to follow through. Also, the understanding the hard things take time.
With this path complete, the next path becomes smoother.
The Third Path: Curiosity, Follow Through, Obstacles and Ambiguity
This path is different than the other paths: it’s less well trodden, challenging and unclear where it leads. But one’s curiosity and soul is burning to walk down it.
After walking in loops on the first path, learning what you like and exploring, then the second path—learning how to follow through; one is setup with a strong foundation to tackle such a challenging path.
If not gone through the other paths and developed the skills learned there yet, the second one hits an obstacle on this path, they go back to the start. Meaning, they will never get to end of this path and see it through. Always restarting like the first path. This might be out of fears of failure, not understanding how to follow through consistently, not following a path that’s interesting enough for oneself, not believing in oneself and so on.
By the time one gets to this path, one needs to have as much confidence and faith in their ability to overcome challenges and that the path is going to lead to somewhere beautify. Because we are the one who made the path and the compass that directs us along it.
Closing
Everyone has a different path, but these are the paths I’ve found myself to have. I’ve always had a burning desire to take path three from the start. But once I’ve embarked on it, I haven’t been prepared to endure and thrive through the lessons of the path—because I’m struggling with the lessons that are learned on the other ones.
Right now, I’m on path two. It’s not quite as fun as one or three, but I’m learning to live, be happier with small things, be consistent, achieve meaningful goals, manage myself and stay directed consistently.
I’ll soon be back at the beginning of path three. But that time, it will be with a newly instilled confidence, determination and foundation that I’ve built for myself to thrive.