Another Perspective on Life's Path

Purposeful Wanderings - Bradford L. Glass - March 2026

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“The veil that clouds your eyes will be lifted by the hands that wove it.”   – Kahlil Gibran

As noted last month, I enjoy creating perspectives to let you see your journey in new ways. We all learn differently. Last month, I offered a rather in-your-face summary of the path explored over the previous five months of articles. This month offers more of a visual – and perhaps “softer” – perspective of that very same path. 

I see life as an invitation for us to discover and live the unique-to-each “seed” inside us … a seed that knows its own path, and longs for us to nurture it into being by how we live. But we rarely become what life is; we become what we learn life is. Instead of learning about life’s potential, we more often learn what keeps us from it – life is a struggle; only struggle leads to happiness; things “should” be a certain way; we’re somehow not good enough; we need to get things right; we need to be socially acceptable. It’s illusion, yet it gets so embedded in our minds that we neither question nor notice how we spend our lives trying to uphold someone else’s story, then wonder why we’re not happy. All the while, our true self, and our limitless potential, remain hidden.

By intentionally choosing to become the observer of your life and its story, not just a participant in it, you learn how that story got trapped inside you. The perspective you gain offers a bold, new choice – to find, then honor, the true essence that has been hidden inside. How? Set aside 10-15 min. a day – quiet time, free from distraction – during which you replay in your mind (now) things that happened (then) for the sole purpose of getting to know just how unconscious, habituated “thinking” led you to 1) your way of seeing the situation, 2) how you responded, and 3) the results that followed … “naturally.” Catch your own mind in the act of messing with you.

For a moment, imagine yourself and your life as a tree. Your roots are made up of early lessons & experiences; they feed the trunk that becomes your thoughts … unconscious expressions of those very same lessons and experiences. Branches come from those thoughts, feeding the choices you make … and the leaves are the results you achieve/experience in life.

Let’s assume you learned, as noted above, life is a struggle. That thought – and it’s nothing more than a thought – drives your choices … to compete, to prove you’re good enough, to seek answers outside you. Simply by not being consciously aware this is happening, you create the struggle your life has [inevitably] become. Yet you have no reason to believe this is so.

So if you want to know why things are the way they are today, use your quiet time to replay life’s “results” in your mind. It doesn’t matter what you replay – a conversation from today, a situation from last week, a problem from years ago, a childhood experience. It doesn’t matter because it’s the same thoughts (from the past) – not the event itself – that drive choices … that create results you’re having (in the present) … a key distinction. Today’s experiences are the leaves … connected (by branches) to the trunk, and back to the roots (from which they all came!) Trace these connections … from leaf/result … to branch/choice … to trunk/thought … to roots/lessons … and you’ll see exactly why your life is the way it is! You’ll see clearly how results (and your reactions) are not caused by events that seem to evoke them, but by the thinking that continually feeds your choices. This discovery alone causes your reactiveness to wane … and you become more peaceful. Small changes with big impacts.

A note on reactions: We all have feelings; always will. Emotions are teachers; they ask us to listen, learn, then let the feeling go. But mostly we do the opposite. We let them trigger us into reaction instead. We may even see them as validation for our outbursts. No, the trigger is from a thought … an unconscious thought connected to your history, not the event that appears to have triggered it. Find the thought that triggered the emotion that gave rise to your reaction … and the reactive system falls to the floor … peace remains. Leaves > branches > trunk > roots.

Exercise: This month’s exercise is identical to the one suggested last month. It’s on purpose.  Because … no matter what you want to change in your life, the way to change it is to discover what’s keeping you from it. Significant change rarely comes from anything else. Daily personal quiet time for the purpose of self-reflection is critical in two ways: 1) While you’re reflecting quietly, you’re in your conscious mind ... so you’re in the present moment. You see what’s true now, not what may be made up in your head (about the past) or what should be (in the future). 2) It allows you to get to know – on purpose – what’s going on in your mind, right now. No other path I know of can “interrupt” the unconscious reaction we believe is thinking (but isn’t) … so you can consciously change it. 

This is the part most miss. Most think that if they read stuff and understand stuff and know stuff, then things will change for them. They won’t, because the unconscious mind is still in charge, ferrying perhaps decades of life’s nonsense into your “thinking,” which becomes behavior, which creates results. THIS is why your life is something other than what you may dream about!! No amount of “knowing more” will change that; only self-awareness will.

So … with that … consider adopting a personal practice of quiet reflection … 10 - 15 min. every day, forever, during which you simply listen to the “voices in your head,” not to follow them down a dead-end street (unconsciously), but to understand (consciously) how they’ve been messing with your life, perhaps for decades. You may just be surprised, both with what you find, and what changes happen for you … naturally and easily, without force.

This is just one example of how your self-reflective practice each day can help you understand yourself in new ways – ways that allow you to release old lessons (that belong to someone else … from the past) … which creates the inner clarity, objectivity and freedom (that belong to you … in the present) … so you can discover the “seed” of authentic you underneath.

Life Lessons from Nature: Eight big ideas guide nature’s way.  Collectively, they’ve not only created the majesty we experience when we’re in nature, but have sustained life on earth for some 14 billion years. Collectively, they also offer us a path, a framework for how we might sustain our own well-being. I’m highlighting two each month for four months. Here’s the second two:

Self-Organization: Life listens to feedback, an inherent attribute of all living systems, information that guides its next steps. It’s how creativity and opportunity unite to produce order from chaos … naturally. A culture of listening, inquiry and reflection offers a more effective strategy for creating order than one based in command and control. What if you could listen to, and implicitly trust, the clarity of your inner truth and your own experience to guide your next steps?

Simultaneity: Each moment offers infinite possibility, “many right answers.” Choosing one answer ahead of time, as with a goal, limits possibility, for it renders all other possibilities invisible from the start. You create more by learning to see more. In this sense, “reality” is fluid, not rigid … a natural consequence of how you see and think. What if you could dramatically expand your perception, and allow your creative energy to fill the open space?

Book of the month: As with last month, consider writing something vs. reading something. Each day, note what you learn about yourself as you make your unconscious thoughts conscious; notice how they’ve been “defining” your life for you, with neither your awareness nor consent. See if you can discover just where these thoughts may have come from (leaves … branches … trunk … roots). No need to judge them or try to change them. Noticing your thoughts simply for what they are – just thoughts – does the work for you. Appreciate the objective awareness.