When I moved to my current community, I made friends who showed me a shortcut into a beautiful conservation park. I was told it was the path that all the locals use. There always seemed to be a steady stream of people coming and going through this well-worn path through the fence, so I never gave it a second thought and was happy to be in-the-know about this private access point.
However, one day while enjoying a hike on the trail with my family, we were stopped by a group of park rangers who asked us how we got into the park. They proceeded to tell us we could be fined for trespassing for not coming through the front entrance way and paying park admission. I felt sick to my stomach.
Park admission? I had no idea. Shouldn’t there be signs posted to let people know if they were trespassing? Wasn’t this park free for locals?
I went back to examine the access point I’d been using to get into the park. Sure enough, there were “no trespassing signs” clearly marked and I realized the entrance I had always walked through was a chain linked fence that had been cut and rolled back.
I could not believe the obvious signs I had been ignoring to go on the trail! As hard as it may be to believe this, I’d honestly never noticed them before.
Similar to my experience on the trail, there are many things we do without even pausing to think about them. We form unhealthy habits and practices in a variety of unsuspecting ways. For example, the way we speak to our families; the way we express anger; or maybe the way we handle stress or discipline our children. We all have blind spots—behaviours we don’t notice or perhaps even view as problematic.
Similar to being stopped by a park ranger, we often become aware of our problematic behaviours when they stop working for us. Maybe it comes in the form of a relationship breakdown, a mental health crisis, or physical indicators like stress headaches or stomach aches.
Those old paths no longer lead us to desirable destinations. While these “old paths”/strategies may have been a brilliant way to get through challenges in our earlier years, they can end up harming ourselves and those we love.
The good news is that healthy change is possible. The first and likely most difficult step in making change is noticing what is not working. From there, we can take some time to pause and reflect on what changes we want to make. Then we commit ourselves to making those changes happen.
Before we know it, we have forged a new, beautiful path.