I cried as I got on the plane… virtually every vacation ended this way for the past 20 years.

But not this time!

As my return date neared this past week, I noticed I had a strange feeling that I never usually had on vacations… and something that was usually there was missing.

What was there? Contentment. Missing? Dread.

I got really curious a few days before I left and wondered why the change. 

What was different now than vacations past? The answer: my perspective on vacations.

In the past, they were an escape for me. A brief interlude with a fantasy life that was no way similar to my reality.

But this time, there were no feelings of running away from my current reality.

When the time came to leave for my vacation, I wasn’t stressed and burned out.

I was eager to go but not desperate.

I was loving my life, actually.

For the first time in a very long time, it felt good to be “me”.

Then it came to me: I felt this way because my life was finally in alignment.

I was living more authentically than I ever had before and so, no more need to run away.

On the way home, I thought about this a lot and came to these conclusions:

• It wasn’t just one thing but a lot of little choices along the way that got me to this point.
• There’s been a lot of sifting and sorting and getting clear on what would really make me happy regardless of what the outside world thought.
• It’s required a fierce commitment to personal accountability for where I was and doing something to change my situation if I wasn’t happy instead of waiting for the world around me to change.

 

Life really is what you make of it. Conscious creation matters.

As I thought about my life on my flight home, compared the past to the present, I would never have guessed that I would end up living a nomadic lifestyle without firm roots anchoring me in one location because that once represented safety to me.

I guess that is why it is futile to try and plan out your entire life, obsessing over every decision, worrying if you will get it right or wrong.

It’s why we often see only the next step and then the next and the next… rather than our entire life laid out in front of us.

Our current self would not be able to comprehend tomorrow’s version and in fact would likely sabotage the journey.

When we are not on track, getting to the point where we are can seem like a monumental task.

But getting into alignment doesn’t mean solving all of your problems at once.

It simply means make the best choice that you can today and then the next will be revealed.

Step and repeat, with a little faith in the process mixed in for good measure.