Making Footprints

There is a prevailing notion that the path to your desired results or dreams has already been traveled by someone. Simply identify the person, find out what they were doing, “hack” it and you too, will have the identical or virtually identical results they produced.

Or so the infomercials tell me.

In theory, there may be some truth in this. Perhaps there are people who have gone about their life in this fashion – finding a model and duplicating their actions. For me, this is a prescription for disaster. I am not Tony Robbins or T. Harv Eker or Wayne Dyer. They are not me. They have their own methods, personality, energy and approach. It obviously works for them (or so it appears at least at the surface. . . and the infomercials). Good for them. At the end of the day, we all need to look in the mirror, when the cameras are off and no one is around and ask the tough, brutally truthful questions about our lives. Are we happy? Are we following our path, our Tao? Are we making a difference with others? etc.

Every time I veer off track and attempt to follow someone else’s way, I end up crashing and burning, so to speak. It is only when I look at the unknown, n’er walked upon path in front of me and make my own footprints on them does my life become filled with happiness, excitement and abundance.

It takes courage and the ability to deal with risks and the temporary appearance of failures. It is at these moments of moving forward on the unruffled path that my greatest learning and life altering experiences are also unmasked. Following someone else’s method does not allow for the discovery of gems, only for the crossing of the finish line. The problem is that crossing the finish line without dealing with and overcoming the trials and tribulations along the path is an empty reward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best:

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”