Instinct is a funny old thing, isn’t it?
It doesn’t scream at you and grab your shoulder shouting, “Oi, idiot, turn left. You know the way. What the fuck are you doing?”
Well… actually it does sometimes.
But you bloody ignore it.
You ignore the quiet little nudge in your gut saying,
“I know this is going to be wrong… but what if it isn’t? What if it’s this way that gets me there faster?”
And instead of trusting that feeling, you start doing what most of us do…
Second-guessing yourself.
What if I’m wrong?
What if the sat nav knows better?
What if they know better?
So you keep driving.
And driving.
And driving.
Knowing you’re wrong.
You stray so far off course that it’s going to take a whole other journey just to get back to the point where you first started doubting yourself.
Ignoring that little voice in your stomach saying,
“What are you doing? Stop. Take a second. This is wrong. I was right.”
You start tricking your own brain.
“Just keep going. You’ll recognise where you are in a minute.”
Until eventually you look up and realise you’re miles away from where you’re supposed to be, parked in the middle of a pitch-black field like a puppet without its puppeteer.
Alright, maybe that’s a rubbish analogy, but you get the gist. Just run with it.
Lost.
And to make matters even better, the incoherent knobhead you were trying to rescue in the first place is on the phone laughing at you for getting it wrong.
No words of wisdom.
No comfort.
Nothing.
There’s probably a better word for that sort of person, but I feel knobhead covers the general vibe. Feel free to insert your own colourful language wherever appropriate.
Classic.
But here’s the thing.
It wasn’t the road that got you lost.
It was the second-guessing.
The panic in your head trying to save someone else before keeping your own sanity intact.
The constant belief that someone else must know better than you do.
And when you spend enough years doing that…
You don’t just miss a turning.
You miss entire bloody chapters of your life.
Because somewhere along the way you stopped trusting the one person who actually knew where you needed to go.
You.
So maybe the lesson isn’t about never getting lost.
Maybe it’s about finally listening when that quiet little voice says,
“Turn there.”
Or sometimes realising the place you left was exactly where you needed to be all along.
Food for thought.
Maybe we should trust ourselves a little bit more.
Kindness and compassion for other people are important, of course they are. But when someone dysregulates your brain so much that you no longer recognise your own compass…
It might be time to pass the baton.
Anyway.
Enough of all that deep, meaningful stuff.
Let’s talk about me.
(Just kidding.)
I’m hoping to get cracking with the edits for the second book this week. I was meant to start today, but I’ve slightly strayed from the path I was supposed to be on.
We won’t go into that right now.
Maybe later.
But hopefully soon I’ll be able to announce the launch date for book number two:
A-dick-ted to You.
The name might need a little playing with, but all will be revealed soon.
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