The Lesser Paths and Better Paths

I see regret in many people. It is painful to wake up to our lives and realize that we are on the wrong path. It may appear we have chosen the wrong job, we have sought the wrong relationship, raised our kids improperly, moved to the wrong town, and so on.

When our path is wrong, we feel it with our whole body, with the resistance of every fiber of our being wanting something else. Anything else. We want to eliminate the dead weight we carry around every day as part of our life’s burden.

However, we often forget that we needed this wrong path to see how wrong it truly was. Or we needed this wrong path to learn great lessons that would help us on the road to better paths. Or, in many cases, when we are young, no one could have talked us out of taking this path. It’s as if it were our destiny. I’m aware of many people who had a hunger for adventure and travel, and so they went to different states or even countries, only to realize that the place they truly belonged was back at home where they grew up.

I use the term “wrong path” because we all know what it means. But we must understand that a path that seems right for us in one moment can change and become the wrong path. And vice versa.

Truthfully, the wrong path does not exist. There are only better paths and lesser paths. Naturally, we will aim to take better paths and avoid the lesser ones. And when we cannot avoid them, we will wish to get through the lesser paths as quickly as we can to move on to something better.

Here is what comes to mind for me when I think of the lesser and better paths.

When I finished my undergraduate studies at Purdue University, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I thought it made sense to continue my studies in psychology, as I did enjoy the field. So I decided to go to graduate school, but many things on that journey ended up being wrong for me, and I chose to leave after three years with a master’s degree even though I had been expected to finish the Ph.D. degree there.

During my time there, I struggled to enjoy anything that I was doing. Everything seemed like work to fill my life with. I lost perspective, and in many ways, I stopped recognizing who I was. I had become whatever I needed to be to fulfill the role of graduate student that I had been playing. I was playing the role, not fully embodying it as my own self. For me, it was the right choice to leave.

A few years after leaving, I realized that this “wrong path” in life had given me so much. I completed advanced courses in psychology and statistics. I had published academic articles and book chapters, which helped me learn to write professionally. I learned to organize my time and work, which was something I had never done before this. I practiced presentational skills, which was an area that I always struggled to perform well in. And I learned to work collaboratively rather than just on my own. Almost everything I had done helped me to later succeed in creating my own life and business on my own terms. In the end, I had done so much in three years that I felt as if I had acquired six years’ worth of experience in that period. One of the things I disliked the most in the program was the intense workload, but I could finally see that it had all been worth it after finishing.

Understand that when we are on the wrong path, often, this is just a part of our journey toward something better. I am glad that I completed three years in the graduate program because that allowed me to gain most of the benefits from being there. If I had left earlier, I may have lived with regret, knowing that I could have learned and accomplished so much more. Yet if I had left later, I would have also lived with regret, knowing that I was living a lie, pursuing something that was not me. I had been working toward something that my heart was no longer in.

When you believe you are on the wrong path, you have to ask yourself if there is a better path available to you. If not, it could make sense to continue on the road you are on, as long as you gain something from it. However, sometimes, to find a better pathway, you must open yourself up to the unknown, to uncertainty, and explore what you can create in your life out of nothing. Sometimes it is worth taking that leap.

A realization I have come to in living my own wrong paths and seeing others live theirs is that we need these paths in our lives. In many ways, our lives may end up just being a series of lesser paths that we take, and then better paths, and then lesser, and then better, in endless cycles.

The lesser paths that we take help us learn and grow to identify those better paths. With that experience, we can then take those better paths more courageously, confidently, with greater skill, poise, and gratitude.

Ultimately, the lessons that we learn along the journey of lesser and better paths will help us become our better selves.