How do we know we’re ‘getting it right’? As you know I often talk about values and core needs and how they impact how we feel more than we realise.
The thing about both of these areas is that they can slightly change over time. This is also the reason we can feel 100% sure something is the right thing for us and then wake up years later and ask ourselves what happened. Because things kept gradually changing, which eventually pushed us completely off course.
A few years ago I realised that the key question that can bring us back to center of gravity the quickest is to simply ask “Am I leaving behind a trail I’m proud of?” Because it’s easy to get stuck in the day to day of life, without reflecting on the bigger picture.
Now you might think that “I don’t want to change the world, so why should I need to ask myself this?“. Your answer to this question is yours and yours alone. It’s depending on your version of happiness and ambition level. Some people want to change the world and some prefer to change something small in their immediate surroundings.
Let me share an example: one of my personal values is authenticity. For me it’s key to walk my talk (and share it with others) in a way that that is true for me and comes from an authentic space within. It wasn’t always easy to be that honest and vulnerable though. For many years I worked in roles that did not really align with me and I felt like I way lying to myself by not leaving. But it’s not easy to take that step and find the right thing when most things in life just feel a bit wrong.
The quality question raised above was one of the things that made me realise that I had to do things differently. Was I leaving behind a trail I was proud of?
We can’t delegate these important life decisions to anyone else and we only do get a certain number of days in our life after all (check out this short but powerful video for a visual of how most of us spend our days).
It’s pretty simple really. Are you proud of how you have spent them so far? And what trail are you choosing to leave behind? If not, there is no time like today to change that.