Last month I announced my first course and launched it on social media (if you can call sending out one post on social media a launch).
I have been blogging for two and half years now, have a decent number of followers on Medium, Substack, and LinkedIn; I should write and sell courses and make money by now. That’s what I was thinking.
That thinking came from all the stuff I am reading from the Internet gurus. Almost everyone writing on the big platform seems to teach that you should establish yourself on a platform, build an email list, and start selling courses.
But what if you don’t want to. What if making money online is not your objective. It wasn’t mine when I started blogging two and a half years ago. Then I got sucked in by all the free advice available on the internet.
Until about last week, when I sat down to figure out why I felt uncomfortable with running the course due next week.
That is when I wrote down the reason I started writing in the first place. Here they are:
- To get better at expressing myself.
- To share my insights.
- To overcome my fear of publishing.
- To tell my story.
- To leave a legacy.
It was not my intention to launch another career. Rather I want to devote my remaining life learning to write better, making friends with like-minded people, and have something to feel excited about.
Online writing is providing me all that. Then why am I getting into the rat race of running courses?
Enough people are doing that, and some of them are much more experienced than me.
I need to keep doing what I am doing and enjoy the journey. I have nothing to prove, either to myself or to anybody else.
As soon as I realized that, a ton of weight lifted from my chest.
It is not the first time I have chosen the wrong path.
And it is not the last.
What is important at times like these is to watch out for cues.
I have a quote that sits on my pinboard to guide me whenever I feel uncomfortable with a decision.
I must have decided wrongly because I am not at peace, I made the decision myself but I can also decide otherwise because I want to feel at peace. I do not feel guilty because the Universe will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let it. I chose to tell it and allow it to decide for me. — Anonymous
Following the Path of Least Resistance
I have discovered that we have always pushing ourselves to do more.
We think it must be the right thing because everybody is doing it. Keeping with the Johns has become our way of life whether we need it or not.
What I am finding is, if we leave the things to follow their natural course, we will reach the right decision in due time.
This is something that Robert Fritz tried to describe in his 1984 book The Path Of Least Resistance.
You are like a river. You go through life taking the path of least resistance. We all do — all human beings and all of nature. It is important to know that. You may try to change the direction of your own flow in certain areas of your life — your eating habits, the way you work, the way you relate to others, the way you treat yourself, the attitudes you have about life. And you may even succeed for a time. But eventually, you will find you return to your original behavior and attitudes. This is because your life is determined, insofar as it is a law of nature for you to take the path of least resistance. — Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance.
That is true for all of us.
Although self-improvement literature has been telling us, “The path of least resistance is the path of the losers” (H. G. Wells) and “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men,” (Henry David Thoreau), it is the path of nature.
Besides, who wants the rivers to run straight anyway.
I have spared myself a lot of grief by following my nature and have opened myself to a lot more possibilities.
“If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.” ― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance.
I might run courses one day. I might do online webinars, seminars, and summits one day. But at the moment, they are not the right thing for me to devote my energy to.
That decision gives me peace.
If you, too, are not at peace with anything in your life right now, use your right to change that decision and let the universe make it right for you. Follow the path of least resistance and trust it will lead you to the right decision.