Hiking on the North East Coast of Aruba is one of my favorite things to do. On Saturday morning as I am hiking a couple of mountain bikers passed me. One of them said “you are far away?” “I thought, am I far away?” I thought I had only hiked for a little bit and was just arriving at the coastline. I thought I was maybe 20 minutes away from my car.
As I continued my hike I wondered about the mountain biker’s comment. Am I far away, meaning far from civilization? Or did he mean I was not paying attention? While I continued to wonder, I started wandering further. I passed the coastline, watched the ocean roughly splashing, picking up a piece of driftwood here and there.
I greeted some tourists passing by on a horseback-riding tour and decided it is time to climb back up the mountain to return to my parked car. Well I thought so, but when the horses passed me, I thought to myself, that is odd, normally they don’t take this route. But I was enjoying myself and continued my hike up the mountain.
Quite some time later I began to see beautiful homes, but no car. This is not where I am supposed to be! I didn’t recognize the road anymore. I was definitely lost. I tried to find some short-cuts but with the cacti and their prickly pins, it really wasn’t an option, so I decided to hike back on the same road as I came, which took me an extra hour.
Back at the coastline I realized how far off the track I actually was. I must have been so involved in my thoughts that I didn’t notice that I hiked much farther South than I normally do. The mountain biker probably meant I was far away in my mind and I took a wrong path. But was it a wrong path? I actually discovered new hiking trails that I can explore in the future, saw beautiful horses, and had a great relaxing mindless morning.
The spiritual teacher Ram Dass says: If you have 5 paths and don’t know which one to take, try all 5 of them. In life, we don’t know which path leads us to our right life, but all paths lead to something. Sometimes we take a path and we think that’s the way to go, so we continue to take it. But when we take the same road every time, we are likely to get the same results in our life.
I didn’t take that wrong path consciously, but the experience gave me more wisdom and opportunities.
If you find yourself on a different road, surprised by the traffic or donkeys that you see, just observe mindfully. It might be time for you to have a new experience! Trust that we all find the right path at the right moment and this gives us the freedom to explore. I love explorations and I’m glad I have 4 more paths to go!
I like the thought that every path leads us to somewhere.
Gayle
Great responses. It is one of the haedrst part of Action Learning trustung the team. About half the time my obvious question is completely off the mark as the team works towards identifying the problem. The other half of the time they get to my obvious question on their own. If it was time for an intervention I would start with the standard 3 -How are we doing as a team on a scale of 1 10?What are we doing well?What could we do better?And if appropriate What is the quality of our questions?What could make them better?Why is that important?It’s important when we choose these questions to pick a question that reflects the behavior we want to see. The team’s way of processing will shift in the direction of the question we ask regardless of the answer they give, hence, the need to choose future positive focused questions.Happy CoachingBea