Sustain Your Vision

Purposeful Wanderings - Bradford L. Glass - January 2026

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“None but ourselves can free our minds.” – Bob Marley

This is last in a 5-part series on walking your authentic path in life, a path that offers peace, meaning, well-being, connectedness, freedom. If you’ve been following from the start, your emerging non-judgmental clarity (Step 1) allowed you to discover your unique path (Step 2) so you could then envision being that truth (Step 3), and then take step into it each day (Step 4). (It’s not too late to start. Just make sure you allow each part to do its work.)

Step 5: Sustain. With clarity and self-awareness, you’ve begun “walking your unique path,” simply by taking one step each day, as if an experiment, learning & editing as you go. Life is not about being done or getting somewhere; it’s more like a game, where you “take the field” each day, practicing being the best you you can be. Viewing life as the practice it is, the “work” is sustaining what you’ve discovered and built. Two aspects of sustaining guide your days. One is “remembering the path.” You do this through quiet self-reflective time each day, using exercises from Steps 1-4 … every day, on purpose. The second is “being yourself in the world;” this month’s article outlines practices for that … in three areas of your life: (1) extreme self-care, (2) trust in self, vs. the opinions/demands of others, (3) connecting deeply – with yourself, nature, higher power, and strong communities of love and support. 

We humans are creatures of habit. The way we break old habits is by creating new ones. But old habits tell us not to do that. We need a mechanism to “stay awake” – aware, alive, connected, and growing a sense of trust in our hearts to know how life is going. Without this, old voices – our own and others’ – will pull us back to old ways. Daily practices help you become self-referencing (using your own internal feedback mechanisms, not external ones like opinions, judgments, goals – as the way to assess life’s quality) & self-sustaining (generate new perspectives and insights, designing your own practices so as to incorporate new ideas into your everyday being).

And as you step into your vision, you see that how your life goes is a function, not of the outside world, but of three ingredients of your own choosing: (1) non-judgmental conscious awareness of what is going on right now; (2) acceptance of, and trust in, your innate creative genius (3) feedback, the natural information flow inherent in life’s experience that tells you how things are going.

(Because life IS practice, I merge ideas and exercises as one. Three ongoing practices/exercises guide your way.)

Practice: The felt experience of self-care. Caring for yourself creates self-trust, evokes emotional intelligence and resilience, and improves your connection with others. Create daily rituals to honor and respect your many dimensions. Like a wheel missing a few spokes, you don’t “roll” well if you honor only one or two dimensions. You can start with these ideas to honor each of six spokes of your being, adding your own as you go, as you learn:

Physical: walk, do yoga, eat well.

Mental: read, learn, think.

Emotional: be with loving people, journal, create fun, have fresh flowers at home.

Relational: connect, join communities of like-minded others, build support systems.

Soulful: silent time in nature, watch a sunrise, listen to your inner voice.

Spiritual: time in nature, inspiring music, connect with a higher power.

The act of being with yourself in loving ways, in addition to simply being good for you, prepares you for the next two practices – using your experience to guide you, and to be deeply engaged in a life far bigger than your own.

Practice: The felt experience of self-reference. The more clarity you have about yourself and your vision, and the more clarity you gain via the practice of self-care, the more both act as a “filter for the unnecessary.” You no longer need to think about what’s right for you; your authentic self handles it. In a few moments of quiet time each day, absorb the “you” you’ve become. Replay parts of your day or week and notice yourself being you. Notice your choices and the impact they have on the results you experience. Resist temptation to judge or change anything. With time, you realize that the life you experience is the one you create, in each moment, with your intention, thoughts, words, choices and actions. Subtly, your “reference system” shifts from one based in what others think to one based in your vision and your personal principles, powered by your own self-trust.

Practice: The felt experience of connection and community. You are part of many communities. Like individuals and like nature, communities are ecosystems – collections of parts united by common purpose. Reflect quietly a few times a week on communities of which you are a part. You might include self, family, friends, workplace, nature, social, faith, town, nation, planet. Reflect on how you contribute to each, and how each contributes to you. Notice how, in their most positive sense, communities help expand the “you” you’d otherwise know, and how you expand each community to something bigger than it could be without you. What meaning do you find in how your life story overlaps the community’s story? (You might notice too, if, or how, communities collude with “not you,” thereby inhibiting not only your contribution, but your intention to honor your true self.)

Life Lessons from Nature: In the mid-1800s, Charles Darwin uncovered key secrets of the winning strategy in nature’s game. Nature plays hard, often rough. The aftermath of her playing doesn’t always appear pretty to us, and oftentimes seems quite unfair. Violent storms can render a coastline unrecognizable in a matter of hours. Fires ravage an entire forest. Predators and prey create a complex web of life. Flowers blossom each spring in the ritual of sustaining life. Tropical breezes and lapping waves embrace Pacific islands in tranquility and beauty.

Underneath it is nature’s game – the process of creative expression. Nature has become quite an expert at creative expression and has learned how to play the game very well. She not only never stops, but she also keeps getting better at it. As masterful as she is, nature nevertheless wins some and loses some. The landscape we see today, anywhere on Earth, is a result of her “winning games.” (Not a bad record, I’d suggest). We see her losses only temporarily, for they are quickly absorbed back into the process, fodder for improving the next round of play. Darwin called the results of her losses “natural selection.” The loss column simply became the “coach” for how to play better next time. There is no judgment, only learning and growth. No energy wasted on “why.”

By winning some and losing some, nature continues to perfect the process of creative expression. Over four billion years, she has created a sustainable system of remarkable beauty and wonder. We are part of that creation. Our invitation, then, is to take the game to the next level of play, and not sit on the sidelines wondering when someone will invite us to play, or lamenting the idea that we’re not good enough to be out on the field. In the “real” world of nature, those are candidates for natural selection. “Survival of the fittest” is not some display of competitive arrogance. It’s the courage to step in and play your best game, every day.  When you play a game you love, life becomes easy indeed. And along the way, it’s your love that sustains you during times of loss.

Book of the month: The Art of Pilgrimage, by Phil Cousineau. Although intended for a “proper pilgrimage,” his ideas are helpful everywhere … a vacation, a difficult conversation, a project, even life itself (the ultimate pilgrimage). He defines pilgrimage as a journey with challenge and purpose, created by finding the sacred along the way. He expands sacred to mean “the ground that stirs our hearts and restores our sense of wonder.” Consciously or not, most of us long for connection with the sacredness of life’s mystery. What if we could find the extraordinary in each ordinary moment? It’s right before our eyes, waiting for our discovery. The price of admission: awareness.  A repeated bit of wisdom: “Pass by that which you do not love.” What a freeing thought.