Detours. You know the routine.
"Road closed ahead."
"Local traffic only."
"Proceed with caution."
Maybe you could say they are signs of summer. Road construction season.
Change in the name of progress. On recent travels across Wisconsin, sure enough, we found some of those "Road Closed" signs, and that put us on a detour around the area being repaired. A longer trip than normal. Oh, not a lot longer, but still. Our time is precious, isn’t it? And here I lost a few minutes to some road construction!
A few minutes?
Is life that structured that a few minutes makes that big of a difference?
And, to think, I also had the chance to see some countryside views that I wouldn’t normally have been privy to.
A detour. An opportunity to see things anew. Not always the way we probably look at road construction.
And such is life.
Have you ever been cruising through your day, only to be sidetracked by something unplanned? An unexpected problem to deal with. A sick child. A broken garage door as you’re headed out (that happened to me today). An unhappy client. And on and on.
Or maybe even bigger things. A job lost. An unexpected death. An accident leading into a long hospital stay. A son caught "doing drugs". An unplanned pregnancy. A car accident.
Life is full of unplanned detours. Some small. Some big. And on the surface, it can be hard to look at any of these as being good.
"Ugh. How long far behind is this going to put me."
"Why does this always happen when I’m so busy."
"Why me?"
Does any of this sound familiar? I know I’ve been there. Cruising along, hitting on all cylinders – and then – bang! Road closed ahead. Find a different path through your life buddy.
That can be frustrating. Maybe you want to pull your hair out. Or just crawl into bed and never come back out. Cry. Throw something. Retreat.
What if.
What if, we looked at life detours through a different lens? You may have done this before. What if we looked at life’s detours as something to embrace. In many cases, we can’t just barge through the "road closed" signs in life. Taking a detour is the only way to keep moving forward.
In life, we always have a choice as to what that detour will be. And that’s a choice of our attitude and the path we choose to take. When we can see the positive, the good that’s out there – those detours in life can be very life-fulfilling. There’s so much out there in our world. And so there’s no way we can see and experience everything life has to offer. Taking a few detours along the way – and really experiencing them – what a great opportunity to see a different path in life. Meet new people. Build new relationships. Develop new ideas. The list is endless. Especially if we’re open to seeing the possibilities that exist on these "detours" life often throws at us.
That’s not to say that some detours won’t be sad or frustrating or challenging. There will be detours that are. Still, even in these detours of life, we have a chance to grow and learn more about ourselves – as hard as some of those hours may be. It may be allowing the pain we feel to surface and come out. Or maybe just saying "I’m hurting". And when we do this, when we start to accept more deeply the detours in our life, even these very difficult detours – that’s when we’re ready to experience a richer and more abundant life. Even if it doesn’t feel like that "in the moment", there is abundance waiting for all of us, if we allow it in.
Your Turn
Life detours happen to all of us. There’s just no way everything is going to go just as planned in your life. In fact, looking closely, it’s hard to go very long at all without some sort of "life detour" thrown at us. Some can be really big. Some really small. And anywhere in between.
Do you embrace these detours in your life? Or, are these moments where you grumble and ask "why me"?
Your life is full of amazing opportunities. Are you seeing them all? Or, are some slipping by because you’re not seeing the "scenery" on the detour your life has taken.
Embrace these opportunities that life gives you! And you will lead a life full of abundance, filled with moments that deeply connect you with yourself and the world around you!
This guest post was written by: Lance Eklum, the creator of: The Jungle of Life. (Blog).
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