It’s Sunday morning, and I’m curled up on the couch with a kitty in lap and tea in hand; my favourite place to write from on the weekend. As I sit here, sipping my steaming tea and stroking this precious little ball of fur, I’ve been reflecting on a conversation I had with a friend about life choices. She shared with me that after finally finding her dream career, she wished it hadn’t taken her so long to get there. She felt as though the previous careers she had tried, and evidently failed, were only road blocks delaying her current joy - as though the choices we make that don’t work out equate to failure at all.
Together, we reflected back on her previous careers, and started connecting the dots. She quickly realized if she hadn’t taken that job in a coffee shop, she might not have gained the confidence needed for her next job in public relations. And that PR job gave her skills needed for the following job, where her qualifications came from past education she originally assumed useless. It was here that she eventually met the person who connected her to the career that now feels so right.
It felt easy for me to encourage her to connect those dots, because when we look objectively at someone else’s life, it’s so obvious to see there are simply no wrong turns. No wrong choices, no bad decisions, no such thing as a mistake, because everything is unfolding for a specific reason - even when it most definitely doesn’t feel like it in the moment. We cannot miscalculate our lives, because every choice, no matter how useless or regretful or unfortunate or silly it might seem in hindsight, is here to teach us something. Every experience, hard or beautiful, challenging or easy, painful or joyful, big or small, is shaping is into who we’re meant to be.
After our conversation, I started reflecting back on my own life. Could I do for myself what I’d done for my friend, and begin to see the choices I’ve made (especially the ones that feel like mistakes) through this same lens of acceptance and trust?
I began to connect the dots in my past, realizing as I did so this one simple truth: there really are no wrong turns. The choice to drop out of post secondary education when I was 18 felt like the biggest failure, but I can now see I simply wasn’t ready to step into the career I wanted so badly. I would return many years later, when the time was right.
Although taking space away from school to work in the restaurant industry felt like a back step, it helped me build confidence in myself. Choosing to do an office administration program (that didn’t really light me up) gave me the administrative and human relations skills I needed to start my blog and begin to build a business. Taking an unaligned intern position in the corporate world, which lead to a full-time job for two years, provided me with the financial resources and time to build my savings and continuing growing my platform.
When I finally chose to go back to school to become a Nutritionist, I was a completely new person; someone with the confidence and skills and maturity and growth and already existing platform needed to be an entrepreneur in this industry. I was ready. In the moment, non of these choices made sense, or seemingly related to one another in any sort of way. For a long time, everything that didn’t work out felt like a personal failure. Now, I can see just how perfectly divine each one of these choices was; every step building upon the next, every experience unfolding in exactly the right timing.
The choices we make, the paths we take, the directions we choose to pursue, whether for a short while or a long while, make up an intricate road map of our lives. And these paths are not straight nor linear. They twist and turn, fork and fall, winding up steep mountains and plunging into deep ravines. Sometimes, a decision makes complete sense in the moment, then later we question why we ever pursued that path in the first place. And sometimes, these choices don’t make logical sense at all, but a little nudge inside urges us to take the path, anyway.
No matter how windy your road map may be, the simple truth is:
There are no mistakes.
There are no failures.
There are no wrong turns.
Everything is unfolding for us in some way. To teach us a lesson. To encourage our evolution. To help us grow. When we see life through this lens, there’s a sort of expansive freedom that comes with it. We cannot mess up our lives. We cannot go wrong. In actuality, we’re being guided every step of the way. Things are happening for us, not to us. We can trust the divine timing of our lives, and we can trust ourselves, too. There are no mistakes. There are no failures. There are no wrong turns.
This truth feels good to accept, and also takes a weight off my shoulders as I move into the future; continuing to choose untouched paths and make new choices and go different directions and take fresh turns. Continuing to trust myself, trust my life, trust the unfolding of all things - even when it doesn’t make sense in the moment. Continuing to believe in the choices I make, whether they become the end thing or simply a stepping stone along the way.
From my heart to yours, thank you for reading Hannah’s Haus. If you feel connected to my work, please let me know by tapping the heart to like the post, commenting with your thoughts below, and sharing this post with someone else who might enjoy it.
So beautifully written, Hannah. I get what you mean when you say that sometimes our paths don’t make sense, but it’s all part of a divine plan. I believe this plan changes as we change too!
This reminds me of something I read before too: there are no “mistakes” or wrong turns; the universe just orchestrates a new plan for us after every choice we make, like the loved beings that we are 💖
Thanks for this beautiful Sunday note x