journey | David M Masters

The Trajectory of Personal Growth and Change

If you’re on your own path of personal growth and expansion, your journey will be highly individualized and unique. Certainly, there will be times when your place in time and space and your coordinates align with someone else, leading to a bit of education and excitement along the way, then you will find yourself being led in yet, another direction.

Why can’t you just join hands and enjoy the entire journey with a particular group of friends? You absolutely can do that, but your expansion will be limited by maintaining the familiar frequency vibration of your friends. To be true to your evolutionary potential, there will be times when you go it alone, and in many cases, once you have traversed this rugged trail alone, you find yourself in very different territory and on a completely different trajectory.

If you’re travelling from Seattle to New York, the slightest change in trajectory can land you in Miami Beach. Likewise, your trajectory greatly affects the direction your path will lead. The truth is, while you share similarities with other people that you meet along the way (and it can be fun to hang out with others there for a while), you must realize they are not you. Even if you share camaraderie with them because you have certain things in common, you gotta move.

You can tarry and stay there if you want, and many people decide to do so because it’s familiar or comfortable. Even so, you know something inside you is beckoning you to new vantage points and unexplored territory. You are so very unique and you’re coordinates in time and space are so highly individualized that no one could possibly be on the same journey as you.

No one really knows you. They haven’t lived the life you have lived. They do not know the thoughts that race around inside our head, they do not share the exact same chemistry as you (no, not even identical twins). The YOU of who you are is not like anyone else. This is God’s gift to you. You can decide to accept it and get moving, or deny it and remain the same.

Your evolution is calling to you. You are the change. Your new life is waiting for you to arrive.

But you will not get there if you don’t go.

How do you do it?

Only you can decide. Others who have forged new paths who have given us clues of how to successfully charter new territory start by establishing their starting point, longitude and latitude, inventorying supplies and resources prior to departure. It’s best to establish where you are (to the best of your ability) before your launch.

It’s good to have a plan. Columbus had a plan, to discover an alternate route to Asia. Similarly, you should have your individualized plan based on your dreams, desires and the result of your deep inner work. Like Columbus, even with the best intentions and planning, you could end up somewhere you never intended to be. Even so, when you arrive you will know this was your higher calling and, who knows? Your journey may be celebrated and an inspiration for other “Expansion Explorers.”

Which brings up an entirely oft overlooked detail of documenting ones journey. I’ve never been one to be one for journaling, but many of my clients and friends swear by it, although I have left a trail of writings that painfully document my particular thought process at various times along my personal journey (that are embarrassing to look back on from this vantage point). I can attest to the validity of documentation. In any logical and/or legal (or medical) sense, “if you didn’t document it, it didn’t happen.” ‘Ere, journaling, whether privately or publicly (as in social media), is highly recommended.

This is your time. This is your life. This is your journey.

Establish where you are, have an intention and plan in mind, and move.

Want you ramp up your effectiveness and influence? Chart your progress via documentation.

If you are called to do so, allow your courageous journey to be an inspiration to others, who may be too frightened to do so.

Feel free to check in with me along the way.

When the Going Gets Tough

The Tough Get Going

What does, “When the going gets tough the tough get going,” mean?

Does it mean that when things become difficult that were supposed to push through and do whatever is necessary to stay on this single, focused track?

Or, does it mean

To grab your stuff and find another direction to go in?

If you ask me, the answer is both.

It comes down to a matter of what you really, really want.

When things get tough, at the very least, it’s an attention-grabber enabling you to pull back and reassess your situation. This applies to any time the going gets rough.

As a conscious traveler, this is your opportunity to take time to re-evaluate, so stop, take a break and look around. What do you see? What do you feel?

How does your current circumstance fit within your idea of the path leading to your highest and best?

Consider this: If you are inspired, moving on the right path, in the right direction and gaining momentum from where you were to where you want to be, then the journey should basically be resistant-free.

Resistance (or when the going gets tough) is an indication of the need to change.

Now, you can push-through and make yourself and everyone else in your car stay on the track you’re so determined to maintain (which is not a bad thing) or you can be looking for alternative opportunities.

In most cases, when you are faced with a great deal of resistance, there is a divine door waiting for you to explore, leading to a path that is a more effective route to the destination you to arrive at.

You can stay on the path you are currently on, or you can consider taking the doorway to another path that could be far better for you.

This is not to say that if you are on the right track, that you will never encounter difficulty, but consider this: If things are difficult, it is likely an indicator that you could be doing something different, something better.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean a drastic change, it could be only the slightest adjustment that could make all the difference.

For instance, if you’re in Seattle and you’re flying across the country in a straight line, you would end up in New York, by changing your flight path by just a few degrees (not much at all, really) you would end up in Miami.

Sure, you could still get to Miami (assuming that is where you wanted to be) by going to New York first, then travelling from New York to Miami, but when the going gets tough, it could be an indication there is a better way.

So, when the going gets tough, realize that you are making your travel plans and paying for them. Wouldn’t it be prudent to take the time to review all your options before you commit to your travel arrangements?

Plus (I don’t know if you noticed that most bookings are non-refundable these days). I recently booked a flight for two and my traveling companion couldn’t make the trip. So I thought, “great, I’ll have extra leg room and twice as much overhead space.”

To my surprise, I discovered that the airline sells that seat, so even though I paid for it, they resold it again. (Although, I could have paid a fee in excess of what I paid for the ticket to receive a refund.) What?

Energetic Exploration

Ever know someone who seems to be an over-achiever possessing almost superhuman abilities to go and go this way and that, with enthusiasm and energy that seems to never run dry?

Their energy generates a magnetic field that attracts new possibilities and opportunities they seize the ones appealing to them as they race past the others. They appear to have the best luck, achieve more than the rest of us and are generally happier most of the time.

And you think, “I want some of that,” as you try to reverse engineer it. Is it the Starbucks? Green tea? Working out at the gym? A magical supplement? Or you wonder if he/she made some kind of deal with the devil?

This energetic magnetic field is created when you spend more time exploring uncharted territory. This unprecedented stamina is the result of continually pushing forward into areas of life that are new, different, challenging and unfamiliar.

It doesn’t take any magic pill or concoction, what it does require is enough raw courage to begin the process of launching your exploration of the unknown.

There is a certain amount of comfort associated with the safety of keeping things the same, at an even keel, surrounded by familiar faces and circumstances (even though they might be undesirable at times) there is an uncanny feeling of security associated with our complacent lives as we continue to feather the nest around us.

Then there are those jumping out of the nest from tree to tree soaring and exploring the vast horizon.

All it requires is you willing to take the leap out of the nest of your comfort zone. Albeit, it doesn’t have to be all at once, you can exit the next the first time as awkwardly as possible. It’s likely that you’ve been in the nest so long there is no one to toss you out, so you’re going to have to do it on your own.

It’s reasonable to experience an amount of trepidation when first launching from the nest, in fact the first attempt may more resemble falling than flying, but it gets easier and you get better at it every time you do it.

I’m a big fan of baby steps. No need to bite off more than you can chew, just make progress between where you are and where you want to be – no matter how small – it still moves you closer to the things you desire and can have, if you close the gap between what you want and that which you possess.

There are some components which can make closing the gap more expedient and efficient; they are courage, determination, planning, commitment and reward.

Courage: We’ve already ascertained courage is required to initiate the process.

Determination: It will take a certain degree of determination – of overcoming the inner dialogue which is resistant to change – to move into uncharted territory. Resist negative self-talk and start affirming your impending better life.

Planning: This represents charting a course from where you are to where you want to be, with mile markers along the way. For instance, if you were travelling from Seattle to New York, you might have significant stops to make along the way, like Spokane, Glacier National Park, Fargo, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, then your final destination of New York.

Commitment: It will take commitment to leave your home and head out for New York with your first goal of making it from Seattle to Spokane, then each other destination successively between where you are and where you want to be. With courage initiate the fortitude necessary to stay true to your journey.

Reward: Make sure to reward yourself and celebrate each charted milestone as a win bringing you closer and closer to the end result of everything you desire.

Of course, I’m using an example of a coast to coast road trip but any goal including subsequent goals can be used with this process.

Allow for the unknown: On any journey the traveler is likely to encounter unforeseen circumstances. Embrace the challenges appearing along the way, conquer them, retain the learning and resume your journey. No need to let a bump in the road to cause you to abort your travel plans altogether.

Ever notice how exciting it is to go on vacation or a road trip to some place you’ve never been before?

At the beginning 3,000 miles seems like a daunting challenge, but moving from milestone to milestone gets you there… and the trip is enjoyable, possibly with stories of challenges that needed to be overcome to get from here to there, but it was exhilarating.

You had more energy, excitement and attracted new possibilities along the way.

This is the life well lived, the secret ingredient, of the energetic explorer.
What do they do when they reach New York? Chart a new path. And you might be surprised to discover they are running many journeys concurrently, ‘ere their overzealous enthusiasm.

How much better does it get?