When we set a goal and stay committed to the work, paths and opportunities start to appear. Some of them bring challenging situations and decisions we have to make.
Past experience shapes how we handle them. Sometimes the situation is one to learn from. We stay in it and it makes us battle tested, with new skills and more grit. Other times the experience shows us something needs to change, so we pivot and adjust. Pivoting early is how we can prevent unnecessary hardship.
Intuition is a big part of this. It's built from everything we've been through, and it usually knows what's best before we can explain why. When something feels off, we don't need to wait for it to become a hardship. We can listen early and adjust.
The commitment is to the direction, not to every situation along the way. Stepping away from what pulls us off course keeps the main thing the main thing. And if what we set aside is a worthy cause, we can pick it back up later if we choose.
"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address, 2005
