How to Know If You’re On the Right Path

When I say “how to know if you’re on the right path” I am of course talking about the path to creating your most extraordinary life. If that’s where you aim to go, which if you’re here, you probably do. I am right there with you my friends. This whole “getting on the right path” thing is not easy. At least not until we break it down and make a habit out of it, constantly reminding ourselves that this is all we need to do.

Let’s start with what we may be experiencing now. Perhaps you wake up every day and think “oh my god how am I going to get from here (not exactly where I want to be), to all the way to over there (more of what I want).”

Ok, that might even be a stretch, you could really be waking up and thinking “oh my god how am I going to get through the day?”

First of all, BREATHE. We’re going to talk about it. It’s going to be easy, simple, and effective. With digestible steps for every day.

Make Daily Space for Your Dream

If you have a dream of where you’d like to be in your life, the first step is to make space for it here and now. So that it’s not just a fanciful thought that you have from time to time. But rather, a real and true goal that you enjoy working towards every day.

What does your dream look like? Feel like? Does it have shape or can it only be captured by a few words and ideas? Start to really look at it and get to know it.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten your dream or set it aside. Has your dream been an aspiration that you hide from out of overwhelm? That you deny out of fear of never achieving it, or that you shove to the back burner because you don’t have the time and energy? Maybe you don’t believe it’s possible because you’ve taken on everyone else’s limiting beliefs.

Let’s choose again ⇛ Can your dream be something you acknowledge that you want, and that you nurture and care for every day?

Think about it. If you had a baby would you just ignore it because you didn’t have time or because thinking about it stressed you out? No! Well, hopefully not. Hopefully you would give it some loving attention and nurture it to life for some dedicated period every single day. More than that, you would show up as the caretaker out of love and desire to play that role.

The same is true for your art, your message, your goal. Your vision for your one wild and precious life. It needs you to believe in it. It needs you to acknowledge it as real and deserving of love and care. Of being brought into this world.

Accept Any Missing Pieces

I know your first question may be “well, what if I don’t know exactly what I want?” Even better. Your journey will likely be more fun, more expansive, and more surprising as you discover the specifics of what you want to create.

Here’s the thing, whether you have a specific or general understanding of your dream life, either is enough for today. For each and every day. Until it grows, gets bigger, evolves, and takes on a life of its own.

The key is to first acknowledge if your current life feels expansive and like the true expression of who you are. If not, then we get to choose again. Starting with “I want something different” and evolving into “I want x,y, and z.”

Let’s go with the child-rearing analogy again because really it’s very similar. Raising a child is nurturing human life, but…

We can take daily steps towards nurturing ourselves and our dream. I know it may seem overwhelming. Read on for a checklist to get you started.

Checklist: How Do I Know if I’m On the Right Path?

How do you know if you’re on the right path? You make sure to get on the path every single day.

Here are 5 steps that you can use as a daily checklist to be sure that you are.

1. Remind Yourself of What You Want

When you wake up, remind yourself of the dream life you wish to have. State to yourself out loud, or in your journal, or in your head even “I want ______.” However specific or general you are ready to be that day.

NOTE: This is not an invitation to feel badly about not being where we want to be yet. Remember, when we’re on the path, we’re getting there, always. In fact, we never get there and then stop. We just get to the easier trails with the better views.

It’s like reading a book. If you carve out time every day to read a few pages, then is it not guaranteed that you will one day finish the book? Sometimes it takes a few chapters to really dig into the story, but how rewarding is it when we do and it all starts to come to life? The same is true of creating the life we want. We just need to carve out time to read the book everyday. Or in our case, carve out time to focus on creating our most extraordinary life. 

2. Allow Time for Inspired Action & Creative Activity

After celebrating the fact that you completed step 1, you can now move on to step 2. Which is allowing time for inspired action and creative activity.

Here’s where I would normally be writing out notebooks full of to-do lists. Containing every single way I could tackle getting from point A to point B within 5 years given x amount of time working on x project and y goal and z task. This is where dreams go to die.

I want to remind you of something you may or may not know that’s extremely important to note. The National Science Foundation revealed that in any given day, we only have about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts. 95% of them are repetitive from the day before. That means that our daily to-do-lists are essentially regurgitations of the same loop of thoughts. Talk about inefficiency. The good news is that within that 5% is where we integrate new ideas and thoughts each day!

The take away here is that more important than the thought is the action and experience that lead us to the new thought. So, instead of looking at the stale list of activities that you need to do every day, ask yourself this:

What do I want to do today that can lead me closer to the life I want? What do I feel like doing that’s relevant to my dreams, my art, my creativity, my purpose, my message?

Do that. 

3. Let It Be Enough

I hope you’re feeling good after doing step 2 because that was actually the point.

Now, and this may be hard if you’re a TYPE A personality like me – LET THAT ACTION BE ENOUGH FOR THE DAY. Close the book of your dream life – it will be waiting for you tomorrow – and go about the rest of your day.

If worry, stress, fear, anxiety, or any kind of doubt creep into your mind, acknowledge it. Say something along the lines of “I am working towards my dream. Today I made progress. Today I did enough. I am on the path. Every day I learn more, discover more, enjoy more. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. It’s all working out for me.” 

4. Maintain a Loose Awareness of How You Feel

By now you should be feeling pretty good about yourself if you’ve managed to fit in the first 3 steps into your day.

Whatever else may be happening in your life, the accomplishment and joy that you feel from making time to do something you love, and that expresses who you truly are, have hopefully given you a positive boost.

However, I know how easily doubt can creep back in. The thoughts that what we did wasn’t enough, or that someone is doing it faster and better. Or that we don’t know if doing this every day is even going to do anything. None of these thoughts are helpful (or true for that matter) and can only pull us off track. Be willing to believe in the process before you see the full results.

If you’ve made this into a daily routine but you still find yourself asking “how do I know if I’m on the right path?” refer back to this checklist. It can be easy to forget. There’s that doubt creeping in again. But this is truly all there is to do.

When you do this every day and you have more to go on, more inspiration and ideas, more information, more confidence, then the path may fork and open up to a new, bigger, better opportunity. Until then, piece it all together by being involved with it every single day.

I’ll leave you with one more step. Do you know what every single happy, fulfilled, successful person living their dream life says? “Stay the course.” It’s simple and it’s true. Don’t let the over-achiever in you take the wheel and try to drive you off the cliff. Instead, allow the relaxed, nurturing, calm, strong, knowing, trusting, powerful version of you to steer your day and protect your dream like a Mama Bear as you discover what it is and bring it to life step by step, thought by thought, inspired action by inspired action.

P.S. The List you Can Make

You know what you can make a list of? You can make a list of how great you are and all of your amazing, unique qualities and gifts. What makes you a capable creator, a powerful visionary, and an amazing artist.

Create that list and read it every day. Actually, send it to me. I’m serious. Make that list and send it to me and I will keep it as a record of your greatness in case you should ever forget.

You got this.

xx Nomadic Priestess