The Path Will Become Clear

Doing new things can be hard and scary. Walking a new path can be uncomfortable as you don’t know where the path is leading. The persistent feeling that you are failing and not enough can be intense. But remember, this is exactly what it means to walk a new and uncharted path. The magical ingredient which allows you to learn something new is precisely your mindful capacity to sit with the discomfort of not seeing where you are going and not knowing how it will all turn out. This is the case no matter if you are learning a new skill, trying a new practice, exploring a new relationship, or embarking on a new career. The good news is that, just like in hiking, the more we walk on the path, the clearer it becomes. The way becomes more familiar. We not only grow new skills, but even more importantly, we grow our capacity to sit with the disorientation of not knowing. Mindfulness is a practice of making friends with the feeling of not knowing. Through mindfulness practice, doing new things may never become easy, but they may become just a little less scary.

Weekend Wisdom is a weekly sharing from Copper Beech Institute’s founder, Dr. Brandon Nappi.