a user guide to going your own way

so you wanna try something different, huh?

Congratulations!

You’re making a new life decision, big or small, that asks you to venture from the comfy status quo and takes you far from the well trodden trail of the masses. But making a change that goes against the tenants of the culturally ordained values that are injected into us all upon birth is not for the faint of heart. I should know.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a quiet, invisible shift (I want to live a slower, deeper life) or a physical change (I’m done dieting/I want to learn the trapeze) or professional decision (I’m quitting my job/sharing my art/following my dreams).

It can be in the healing of an internally held belief (my worthiness is tied to nothing/I am free to be who I am) or in a sweeping outward change (I’m selling everything I own to move to Europe/back in with my parents), and anything in between — trust me when I say that walking this new path will ask a lot of you.

Because you’re not only departing from the well trodden tail of the masses, but the trusted trails of your own experience, too. But don’t let this scare you — these uncharted territories are, as they say, where the magic happens. And having spent much of my life navigating this haunted and enchanted wilderness, I can confirm this to be true.

But it might be helpful to know a few things before you depart, so I’ve made a little guide for you to take on your journey into the unknown.

What to expect

Anything! lol

And also:

Time and space are gonna get real weird

You’ll have days where you’ll resent clocks and calendars for having the audacity to carry on while you sit and make a decision about which way to go, and you’ll have days where the miles will fly by in seconds.

Most of the time, you won’t be certain if you’re actually moving forward or if somehow you’ve doubled back to where you began or if this whole time you’ve been walking in a circle or if you’ve been swallowed by a black hole and you’re actually suspended in the timeless void of the singularity where physics has disintegrated and you can absolutely never return, but no matter what, one thing’s for certain: calendars and clocks are no longer the measure of forward progress, and seasons and cycles will become your pattern of time.

These cycles are highly contextual, individual to you, and often will mirror the ecological seasons or the lunar tides in their rhythms of decay and regeneration, pushing and pulling, flooding and receding. No part of it is wrong.

But because of this, it will be difficult to explain exactly ‘where you are’ to those who might inquire, or even to yourself. You don’t have to. And as you look around at everyone else, you’ll often feel terribly behind, like you’ve backtracked, or are certain you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere. You’re not and you haven’t.

You will be tested

The moment you decide on some new path, the universe will find some cheeky way to say you sure, bro? You want to be kinder to yourself and then you trip and face plant in public. That sort of thing. Be ready for it.

It will be lonely

Especially at first, but not always. Even the most well intentioned loved one probably won’t truly comprehend your triumphs or your trials. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to share or they should be dismissed! They want you to be happy and safe, even on this weird new path you’ve chosen to walk that makes no sense to them at all.

But how they express this wish depends entirely on how far into their own internal wilderness they’ve ventured. They’ll dump their own insecurities all over you, or they’ll give advice that’s actually just judgment, or they’ll never ask how your journey is going at all because they don’t know how to/are too scared to talk about it.

But also: you will meet new friends out here — whole communities, even. Old friends might surprise you. You won’t be alone forever, this is for certain. But you will have to get comfortable with being misunderstood.

After all, if you were doing this for other people’s approval or validation, you would have stayed on the highway with everyone else.

What to bring

A survival kit

When you’re walking your own road you’ll need things that bring you back when you feel lost. The truth is you’ll feel lost most of the time, so don’t skimp here. While your kit is unique to you and differs in its specifics, here are some general suggestions:

• A way out of your brain and into your body. Sometimes all you’ll need is just a visceral reminder that you’re something other than the swirl of worries, ideas, and potential for both unlimited chaos and brilliance that your mind sweeps you up into most hours of the day. Feel your own breath, or blood, or heartbeat. Look at the stars.

• Unlimited self compassion. The storms of self doubt will rage and shelter will need to be found within your own heart. Over and over and over again.

• Permission slips. To rest, to stop, to start over, to fail, to ask for help, to be really bad at something, to quit, to change your mind, to go for it.

*Some of these may take a lifetime to learn.

A compass

Some good news: your compass is already complete and installed! It is your own body.

While your brain might be prone to panic, doubt, and stories about how you’ve already royally fucked this one up, your body will provide steady feedback and guidance you can always, always trust. Instead of North or South, you’ll have sensation and intuition that will orient you to your environment, and whispers of wisdom and truth to guide you through even the gnarliest of goblin and sinkhole-filled terrain. Listen closely.

Your creativity

This is where freedom and untamed wildness already exists within you. It is a portal to your most honest self that takes countless forms. Explore them all.

You might not fancy yourself a “creative type”, but don’t worry — that silly little story will work it’s way out as soon as you realize how resourceful, scrappy, and innovative you’re going to have to be out here.

In the words of one of our great modern mystics, Bob Ross, you can do anything here. You’ve left the paint by numbers. Your life is your art and you decide how it goes. So bring your wits, big ideas, versatility, imagination, and all your different types of knowing.

What it will feel like

Pretty bad

Nothing will trigger you more than burning the old Playbook and venturing out on your own. Every wound, every critical comment you’ve ever received, every deep seated doubt you’ve ever held about yourself, your abilities, your weaknesses, and your own worthiness will find its way to the surface over and over and ask to be tended to.

There will be ego wars and internal conflict and countless encounters with your shadows, with is this good enough? am I good enough? am I failing? and you’ll be terrified a lot and develop an intimate familiarity of the depths of human embarrassment.

Your inner child will wail and you’ll feel like a mom in a mop commercial, exhausted, and also kinda pissed at the way you’ve somehow been unreasonably tasked with being both the loving caretaker and the one who desperately needs precious taking care of.

Oh, and the grief! So much grief. You will grieve over all you’ve left behind, for all you’ll surely never get to know, for the parts of yourself you’re leaving at each stop along the way, for things you’re setting down that weren’t ever even yours to begin with. You will be asked to say goodbye to many things and people, and it will hurt.

But also, astonishingly beautiful

All of these goodbyes means that there will also be ample beginnings, and therefore, the further you wander, a sneaking, ambient sense of possibility will begin to bloom outward in fractals beyond the horizon. If I could do this, why can’t I also then do that? Interesting.

In fact, watching yourself do any of this at all — and stumble hard, sure, but not die — means your own confidence strengthens. Relying on your intuition and resourcefulness time and again generates a sharpened self-knowledge and a trust with yourself that becomes hard to shake. Your regular confrontations with your own shadows softens from a frenzied whack-a-mole situation to a (mostly) peaceful coexistence. It’s kind of… exhilarating?

And there will be moments, when you’ve paused at some overlook or summited some ragged mountain, where you wipe the sweat from your brow and look out and see a magnificent expanse of everything you’ve been through, and a warm pride will move up through your limbs and you’ll recognize in an instant that everything that grueling path asked of you made you the proficient, attuned person who is standing here today, and your heart will absolutely shatter with gratitude for having had the chance to experience this wilderness at all.

Success occurs in the privacy of the soul.

-Rick Rubin

And then all of a sudden

It will hit you. You’ll realize that your task was never actually taking the risk, or breaking from the status quo, or trying earnestly. Your task was only ever to meet yourself.

Hiding beneath the surface of pressing publish or quitting your job is the real work.

The work of gently pushing your own edges of identity and habituation, of sitting face to face with your own deepest fears and wounds, of interrogating who you think you are and what you think that type of person does or doesn’t deserve, of discovering your range and following subtle energetic trails, of stepping into the role of your own benevolent guide, of setting your own pace and milestones, and of being both the torch and the endless, haunting dark.

And this is why going your own way, in even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant capacity, will be some of the most impossible and brutal work that you will ever do.

And it is why you absolutely have to do it.

*This is not to be confused with “arrival”, with being fully healed, with ultimate lasting happiness, or with being “done” in any sense. Everything, including who you are and what you want and what direction you feel called to walk in will continue to evolve and unfold in countless dimensions and therefore regular reevaluations are strongly advised.

Please note

You will most likely forget all of this very soon and may begin to feel lost, scared, or like you’ve wormholed back to square one again.

Please reference the beginning of this guide.

xo,

Taylor

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