Life is a Detour: Where is Gravity Pulling You?

Yogi Berra once said, “If you’re not sure where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

Click Here to listen to the musical version narrated here:

Life is a detour.

It’s been said, “life is a journey.” And in a perfect world we’d know just where our journey was taking us, and our path would be direct, non-stop, and quickly achieved. We’d all be an overnight success.

For most people, life doesn’t work that way. Life’s journey comes to a crossroad. You get ill, your spouse gets ill, parents get ill, your kid has problems, you’re unable to have a kid, the economy changes, people’s taste’s change, you fail the entrance exam and can’t get into law school or medical school. The list goes on and on. Your life’s direct path comes to a crossroad that becomes a detour.

On earth, gravity pulls you down. But in life, gravity pulls in all directions. And depending on the gravity of the situation, you get pulled in one direction or another that takes you sideways off your chosen path.

The question is, how do you defy gravity? How do you get to success with things pulling in all directions? How do you stop from feeling like you just failed?

When Thomas Edison was trying to invent the light bulb, he had thousands of ideas that didn’t work. Instead of feeling like a failure, he said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. And Oprah said, “Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.”

If you view life through that lens, life is like being in space: there is no gravity. Up and down and left and right are pretty much all the same; you can go in any direction. You can rewrite your script. You can come to a crossroads and take another path that leads to fulfillment and success. You can defy gravity and turn a detour, into a new destination.

Where is gravity pulling you? How can you defy gravity?