Hello and welcome to Find Your Way, the podcast. I’m your host Gena McLean, author of the book Find Your Way and writer under the name Seeker and Sage. It’s a joy to be bringing this content to you, and my hope is that it finds its way into your mind and heart, nourishing you and supporting you as you find your way.  

Chapter 4. Let life change you. 

If we let it, life will show us what we’re really made of. It will help us become more of who we really are. 

We’re meant to change. We’re meant to grow. We’re meant to live the fullest life possible and we can – if we let life change us. 

I have to say this is quite the chapter for me and I could read every entry. 

But I’m going to stick with my little plan of reading to and sharing something about each one and on Page 106 is an entry that’s very dear to my heart and it’s called make peace with the process. And I think this really frames this journey, whether you’re on a mini marathon or you want to apply this to the marathon that is your whole life. 

We can find our way much more compassionately and consciously and happily and easily and joyfully, if we can make peace with the process because it really is a process. 

I say in this entry. 

That this life is a process, but it’s not linear or one directional. 

It’s an ever changing collaboration and integration of actions that have us opening and closing, expanding and contracting, awakening and falling back to sleep. 

Something triggers us. Some tragedy, an illness, an accident, a death prods us to wake up – to the truth, to ourselves, to life. And when we do, we expand our awareness and grow in consciousness. We become more open and accepting. We see things differently and we are changed for the better, for a time. 

We then travel along with this new aperture of awareness until the next trigger, and then the process begins again. 

Or we close down, slowly losing consciousness until bam! Another initiation propels us to open and grow again. 

Expansion and contraction. Opening and closing. Waking and sleeping. It’s the nature of the journey. 

Knowing this, we can stop criticising ourselves for our so-called mistakes and unconscious reactions. We make peace with the process, trusting and accepting the journey as it is. 

There will be times when we yield great evolutionary gains, making the most of the opportunities for growth when they arise. There will also be times when we navigate with our eyes closed, resisting the call to wake up. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed and stuck, it just means we’re human. 

It’s all part of the process of change and growth – of learning and unlearning as we expand and become more conscious. And we’re all doing it at our own pace in our own way. 

May I make peace with the process and my progress. 

Boy oh boy – that’s a pretty big one, I think, it is for me. 

I wanted to just fall apart and become a puddle of tears on the floor when I read that line that said “that doesn’t mean we’re doomed and stuck, it just means we’re human”. And my very big soft heart opens up to myself and to all of you out there listening for the times that we are just human. 

So it’s this process even me reading this today, I’ve written it and I’ve edited it and I’ve rewritten and I’ve reworked it and still, even today I am struck by the truth of this message and how much it helps us to navigate and how much it helps us to be kind to ourselves and to each other. 

When we can accept that this process has its times of opening and closing, there are times when we are open, more open and willing to be open, and then there are times where we are just, we just want to lock ourselves down and go into, shut down and go back to sleep and put our head in the sand and close our eyes to what’s going on. 

That is natural and so human. So this really does help me to feel better about the journey called life and the times when I feel stuck. And I hope it helps you in that way too. 

And I hope that it helps you to kindly and compassionately find your way. 

And just in keeping with that tone of life being a process and the journey being a process, I’m going to go back to page 98 and read the entry called ‘Learn your way.’

The journey with all of its changes and challenges is actually an unprecedented voyage for every one of us. 

No matter how many years we’ve been added, there will be terrain – situations and circumstances – we’ve never found ourselves in before. And because we’re all unique in our biology and our biography, we will navigate in our own way. 

Others can model and demonstrate, instruct and guide, but ultimately it is up to us to find our way, our way, learning what works and what doesn’t as we go. 

Learning implies movement and growth, reminding us that we are all a work in process. We need to be compassionate with ourselves and hold back from judging our choices as right or wrong, good or bad, positive or negative – because it’s all learning and it’s all progress. 

Not only are we learning as we go, we are unlearning. 

Unhealthy and outdated patterns, beliefs, goals and ways of being are made clear when we walk through life with the awareness and intention to learn as we go. 

We’re all on a journey, learning to live, learning to let go, learning to love – ourselves and each other. All at our own pace and in our own unique way. 

May I be willing to let go as well as learn my way. 

Well that’s another bigy for all of us, I think and I’m just going to re-read the opening sentence. 

’cause it’s important; the journey with all of its changes and challenges is actually an unprecedented voyage for every one of us. 

We will all find our own way in our own way, and that’s not just OK, that’s how it’s meant to be. 

So this is not just about finding your way in your own way. It’s encouraging you to learn as you go. And I think you’ve heard me say before that I’m a recovering perfectionist. so this has been a hard lesson for me to grasp and really take on board and let it change me ’cause that’s this chapter title – let life change you. 

So if you can journey through life with the notion that we’re learning as we go and we learn our own way and we all learn at their own pace. We are also unique and circumstances and all the bits and pieces like I said, the biology and the biography, it’s also unique. 

So I hope this helps you to stop being so hard on yourself if you’re one of those people that are pretty good at that, I have become pretty good at that and I’m getting much better at not doing that. 

So a whole lot more understanding and there for myself, when I learn something and unlearn something. Rather than beat myself up for it, and instead of, you know, looking and comparing myself to where other people are out on the journey this really helped me to stop looking and comparing and to just stay on my own path. As my good friend says, stay in your own lane. 

So yeah, not only are we each learning our own way, we’re doing that on our own path in our own good time. 

That’s what happens, though, when we let life change us. We will not grow and expand into our fullest, most incredible self that was made for this planet and this time if we don’t let life change us. So have a play with that, I know it’s not easy ’cause we’re all afraid of what will happen if we let life change us. But speaking from my own experiences and seeing the incredible growth and expansion and change among my dear friends and family members and also clients from the past. Amazing things can happen for us and to us, when we let life change us. 

Thank you for being here. 

Thank you for listening. 

It’s an honor to have you with me.