Charting Your Own Course, by Phoebe Fox 

 

 

Now that you have your journal and something comfortable with which to write, you can begin to document your journey.  To begin, you must choose a personal goal for yourself.  While choosing your own goal may appear self-evident, you might be surprised at the number of people who get derailed from living their own lives because they allow others to choose their goals for them.  Following that process is a sure way to wind up on your deathbed realizing you have reached the end of someone else's life. 

 

In order to live your life, and not someone else's idea of what your life should be, you must actively make your own choices rather than passively allowing the playing out of events or someone else's momentum to make your choices for you.  Are you in the driver's seat in your life, or are you merely a passenger who allows others to do all of the driving?  Or are you a backseat driver in your life, refusing to make choices while criticizing others in your life for the choices they made while you remained silent?

 

The only way to truly live your own life is to chart your own course regardless of what others may think or say about it.  It is, after all, YOUR life -- and the only one you can control.  You cannot control what other people do or say, you can only control your reaction to it.  The good news is they have no more control over you than you have over them.  They are accountable for their choices just as you are accountable for yours.  The only power they have over you is the power you give them by believing they have more control over your life than you do.  That is a lie human beings can get in the habit of telling themselves, and we already covered what lies are last week, so don't fall into that trap.  Changing your life by making proactive choices rather than passive ones can feel scary, however, until you become comfortable with this new habit. 

 

A little over 500 years ago, not so very long really in the spectrum of human existence, people believed the earth was flat.  They drew two-dimensional maps on paper to prove that this was so.  Once it was down on paper, other people took those maps as proof positive that the world was indeed flat.  If you didn't believe it, all you had to do was look at the map to see just how wrong you were.  There it was, in black and white. 

 

There was just one problem, however, and it was a rather big one.  The maps only contained drawings of lands and territories that had already been discovered and explored by modern man of the middle ages.  This left out a good portion of the lands and oceans we now know to exist.  They existed then, too, only these places were unknown at that time because they had yet to be explored.  So how did those early mapmakers resolve this dilemma?  When they reached the edge of the known world, they would simply write in the map's margins, "Beyond this place there be dragons."  Imagine what a deterrent to further exploration that was. 

 

Then in 1492, Christopher Columbus was sitting on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away, when he saw the ships drop out of view at the edge of the horizon.  These ships, he knew, did not disappear into the gaping maw of some imaginary dragon.  He knew this because he kept track of ship activity and HE KNEW THE SHIPS CAME BACK.  They returned to port from beyond the blue horizon, even when you could no longer see them from shore.  From this he deduced that the world must be round, not flat.  Imagine the enormous flapdoodle he created when he began discussing his ideas out loud.  It meant that the mapmakers must be WRONG.  And if they were wrong, then all their maps were likewise wrong.  The thing is, all of their insistence that they were right didn't make the round world flat.  The world had been round all along, and people simply held onto the wrong idea they had in their heads because they were afraid to face the unknown. 

 

What was Christopher's solution?  To sail his ships beyond the known points of the map to discover what new lands were out there.  Think how difficult it must have been to convince a crew of sailors to go with him over the sea of dragons and into the unknown.  Talk about boldly going where no man had gone before.  It was the idea of this very spirit of adventure and commitment to discovery which led Gene Roddenberry to name the vehicles in his Star Trek series "starships" rather than rockets or airplanes.

 

Facing your own personal dragons and fears can feel a bit like crossing an unknown ocean or exploring uncharted territory.  It may leave you feeling nervous or excited depending upon your point of view.  Remember, however, that those dragons at the edge of your life's map are a work of fiction, no more than a story you or someone else has been telling you for entirely too long. 

 

In Maurice Sendak's book for children, Where the Wild Things Are , a young boy is afraid of the creatures he sees at night until he decides to go out and meet them.  That's when he discovers these beings are out there dancing by the light of the moon and having a good time, and he is invited to join them.  As soon as he does so, he learns there was nothing to be afraid of, after all.  He wonders why he didn't join the dance sooner and can't wait until he can meet up with his new friends again. 

 

This usually happens when we face down our greatest fears and take steps toward a brighter future.  While the idea of doing it may, at first, seem daunting, each step we take toward our goal feels easier than the last, until we look up and realize how far we've come from where we started, and how much closer we are to reaching that goal.  This is the reason why tracking your progress is so important.  You are creating tangible proof of your progress.  You are drawing a map of your personal journey, and charting your course in the process. 

 

And when we get to the edge of our own familiar territory, we will not simply write in the margins of our personal maps that "beyond this place there be dragons", as those early mapmakers did.  We will hold on tight to our vision, screw our courage to the sticking place, take a deep breath, and boldly go where we have not gone before. 

 

Our voyage of discovery begins May 1st.