Your Life Is Not a Path, It Is a Painting
Do you ever find yourself in decision-paralysis, trying to figure out what your next step should be but totally stuck?
Or do you carry regrets about taking the wrong path in life or making wrong decisions?
We’ve probably all struggled with both of these.
I think that struggle comes from the wrong concept we have about our lives:
We tend to see life as a path.
But your life is not a path. It’s a painting.
When you think about your life as a painting, it liberates you from the worry about wrong decisions or regret about having taken the wrong path.
Each stroke, each step, each part of your life painting has value. It teaches you something. Helps you discover something about yourself. Get clearer about what’s most meaningful to you, what you want to have more of in your life. Figure out where you want to go next.
With each stroke, not just the painting changes, but you change. You have new perspective, you’re now starting from a different point, you can choose how to move forward from there.
I find this so powerful.
When I look back at my career, for example, there were many times where I made a move that didn’t work out at all as I’d planned or wanted.
I left a very prestigious, secure job for a start-up company that ended up failing just 8 months after.
I started an internet company I was very passionate about (it was a community for working moms) that ran out of capital and had to be sold at a loss for everyone.
There are so many examples, I can write a whole book about them!
It’s easy to call these mistakes or wrong paths, to think oh, I should have stayed at my secure job or known better than to start an ad-supported online business.
But the thing is, I wouldn’t be where I am today — speaking, writing, teaching skills to help people thrive — if I hadn’t painted those strokes on my life painting.
Each taught me something, including about handing change and failure. Each taught me a lot about myself, including what I didn’t love to do, which was so important as I searched for what I do love to do.
Each job, decision, change, experience… they are all part of my life canvas and they’ve made it rich and full and something that’s always evolving.
What if you looked at your life less like a path and more like a painting you’re creating?
What if, instead of regretting making the “wrong” decision, you thought about how that decision led you to others that brought something good into your life?
What if the next time you have to make a decision — about a new job or starting a business or doing something that scares you — you thought about how painting that part of your life canvas would make it richer, would help you grow and expand in some way? (vs. how it could be the “wrong” move)
The thing we tend to forget is that 99% of decisions in our lives aren’t final or permanent. We can always adjust, make a shift, choose a different direction after we make the decision — just like when painting a canvas.
I began to paint 7 years ago as I was beginning to recover from burnout.
Early on, I remember staring at a blank canvas on my easel, not really knowing where to start and afraid to make the wrong move.
Since I didn't know a better way, I'd just pick a color, load it on my brush, and make a stroke somewhere on the canvas. And once it was on there, it was no longer an empty intimidating canvas.
It was the beginning of a painting. And it immediately gave me an idea for what stroke to paint next. And next. And next.
Sometimes, I paint a big part of a painting and don't like how it's coming out at all. (I get really frustrated when this happens!)
What I've learned to do is to walk away for a bit. Often, when I come back to it, I see something I hadn't seen before or get an idea of what I could do to change it.
Joan Miro, one of my favorite painters, talked about how he painted like a gardener.
He would start many canvases and then leave them around his studio, often working on them for years.
When he would look at a canvas that had some paint strokes on it, he would get a new idea for what he wanted to add. Often, he would paint over what he had painted. Or create something completely different from his original vision.
“I paint like a gardener,” he said in one of his interviews I read, “pruning here and there, seeing where I need to add more seeds.”
What a great way of thinking about painting and living!
As I've grown as an artist, I've learned that the biggest thing that helps me to create is not getting attached to some pre-existing idea of what my painting "should be". Instead, I try to allow it to evolve with each stroke. (And sometimes, this is a pretty clumsy process and that's OK!)
I think this is at the very core of why thinking about your life as a painting can be so powerful and liberating:
It allows you to let go of the idea of what it "should be" and create and evolve it as you go.
The only mistake, the only wrong decision, is leaving the canvas of your life blank by not following what calls to you.
Forget about the path. Keep painting your life canvas!