There’s a brilliant book by a man named Robert Fritz, and in it I found a fascinating insight:
Behavior, like water, follows the path of least resistance.
His whole book is built around this concept—that behavior is like a river. If you want to change the flow of the water, you change the structure of the river and the water follows. If you want to change behavior, you change the internal structures beneath it and the behavior will follow.
So today I’m thinking about behavior and following paths of least resistance. It’s easy to fall into a routine of sorts. I like routine. I like having my coffee in my chair every morning to start the day. I like the flow of my days with my kids. I like my evenings relaxing with my husband and my weekly dates with my friends. Life is pretty good and it’s easy to go along with the flow.
A few months ago I was invited to join a group of women. The goal of the group is for each participant to continue on a journey of personal development. Over the course of eighteen months, we will each form a “plan” to become our “Next Best Selves”. The icing on the cake is that it comes with a monetary grant to help carry out that plan.
So I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about what becoming my Next Best Self. Do I want to travel somewhere? Learn something new? Well yes. Duh. But where? And what?
I wrote about the writing retreat that I attended. That was part of it. And it was awesome. And there still more time and more funding. So what next? I don’t know for sure yet.
But I’m realizing something as the ideas slowly make their way to the surface. A lot of my ideas for what I want to do are things that I don’t need special funding or “permission” to do. I want to learn Spanish. I want to look into having a farmers market stand. I want to take the classes for foster parent training. There’s nothing stopping me from doing those things, with or without an inspirational group. Why don’t I just do them?
And that got me to thinking even more: there’s really nothing stopping me from any of it. If I wanted to fly to Iceland for a weekend to see the northern lights, I could make it happen. If I wanted to go to Santa Fe for a weekend and study writing with Natalie Goldberg, I could. I could find a way.
The daily routine is good. I love this life I get to live and I’m not tempted to shirk all my responsibilities and blow through our life savings on non-stop adventuring. But sometimes I get so caught up in the routine that I forget it’s even possible to dream a little bigger.
I can love my life and also dream a little more, say yes, live a little bigger. Where the river flows, that’s up to me.