The Big Picture: Why Journeys Matter

Welcome everyone. I am so excited to have you join me on this adventure as we dive even deeper into journeys, what they mean, how they affect us and, hopefully, practical strategies for how we can navigate these paths that we are invited to take. And in this first episode, it seemed appropriate to lay out the foundation of what I see as what, hopefully, we can be doing with this podcast. It's been a few years now since I wrote the Journey Blueprints and, looking back on that time, I can see not only my own personal journeys and the journeys that other individuals have shared with me, but really the world as a whole seems to be experiencing journeys and they impact so many of us, and I've been feeling a call which, if you know me and my understanding of journeys, this is no little thing to not just go deeper into this study for myself, but also to be much more intentional about sharing the knowledge and wisdom from journeys that I continue to receive, hence this podcast, among other projects.

So what will this podcast be about? Well, maybe we can start with what it won't be about. This won't be an introduction to journeys, at least not in any kind of linear fashion. There will definitely be times when each part of the journey is talked about, but really, if you're interested in learning more about the framework itself, you can either buy the Journey Blueprint on Amazon or feel free to drop me an email at julie at thejourneyblueprintcom, because really everything I wanted to say about the actual structure of the journey is in that book and I don't know that I could improve on that too much here.

Instead, this podcast is going to be more about the actual lived experience of journeys, what it's like on any given day to be feeling a call or working through trials and temptations or being stuck in an abyss. Because there's so much that we can do to impact our experience of the journey, and that mostly comes from learning how to partner with it instead of fighting it, because really the journey is a lifelong companion. It never gives up on us. It also never takes a break, it never goes on vacation, and while that can often seem, at least for me, overwhelming and frustrating, I've come to appreciate the grace and the kindness that that knowledge holds and really, in that sense, this podcast is also not about how to make journeys go faster or how to skip steps or how to ensure an outcome, because really, in the context of journeys. None of those things are possible and, to be perfectly honest, if we truly understand journeys, we understand why it has to be that way.

Instead, we want to focus on mindsets, on choices, behaviors, beliefs, dispositions that allow us to partner with our journeys, to walk side by side with them at their pace, trusting in the ultimate truth that the journey knows best. The journey knows us, it knows what we need and it cares about us enough to not abandon us or bend to our will. The journey's view is eternal and its goals for us are the same. And now you notice that I talk about journeys as though it has intelligence, and truthfully I believe that it does. As I've engaged with these ideas over the last few years, there have been many moments where the power, the elegance, the wisdom of what happens is so clear and so right that it can't be an accident, and so I've kind of conceptualized journeys as almost an entity, like even a person that I can talk with, that I can listen to and that I can learn from. But please know that the universality of this experience, the consistency, the unwavering effort that goes towards our becoming the best version of ourselves, that there really is a divine intelligence behind it. Personally, I have a deep and abiding faith in God, and what I have learned and experienced has really only strengthened those feelings, and I understand it. For some reason, the word God is difficult. Please feel free to substitute whatever word communicates that force in your life that is not only more expansive and bigger than you, but that is also interested in your progression and your well-being, and I will do my best, as we go through these episodes, to bring in lots of examples. Our brains love stories. In fact, they're wired for stories, which is both a blessing and a curse, but in our case, we're going to take advantage of the fact that we learn through stories and as we go through, if there's something in your story that you would like to share, please feel free to share it with me. I never get sick of hearing about people's experiences as they engage with their journeys, and I would love to hear from you and yours, and you can find my email address in the show notes, so please feel free to reach out.

Now, with all that introduction, let me dive into what I want this first episode to actually be about, and that is why journeys matter these difficult, heartbreaking, uncomfortable, unbending experiences that leave us permanently altered. What is the point of knowing any of this if we can't change it or escape it or avoid it? Avoid it altogether? I suppose that this is the first point about journeys that I find compelling. It doesn't matter who we are, what we do, how much we do or don't have, where we live, what body we're in or how powerful we are. We will all have our own, perfectly tailored journeys for the rest of our lives. We will never get to the end of journeys in this lifetime, and as long as we are conscious and able to grow and progress, there will be a journey. We cannot escape it, we cannot run from it and we cannot overpower it. And because of this, one of the first experiences that journeys can teach us and I say that as though it would be a one-time thing and not a lifelong pursuit is how to surrender to something that is greater than we are Now.

In our Western individualistic minds, that can be a difficult pill to swallow. We don't like to be told that there's something that we can't change if we just try hard enough or pay enough money or find the right strategy. Much of our society is actually based on all those principles, but when we're dealing with something that is so far beyond our experience, so much wiser, wise beyond us, patient beyond us, compassionate beyond us, committed to our own good, even beyond us. We get the opportunity to relinquish whatever control we think we have which, yes, is hardly any actual control at all and we allow ourselves to be led, to be guided, to be shown truths that we would otherwise not be able to see.

There is a place here in Utah called the San Rafael Swell. It's a strange little place, and by little I mean the less than 100 square miles located out in what feels like the middle of nowhere. It's a bit of a drive to get to, and the drive is through a relatively empty stretch of land. Utah is a classified desert, and you can sense that as you make your way off the main roads. Driving up to the swell, you would think that there was nothing special. In fact, it looks like the landscape just continues for miles and miles the same way Nothing to see here move along.

My first time visiting this swell was when my kids were younger. My husband and I tried to get us out doing new things when we could, and we still do. This was on the list of things to do that weren't too far from where we were spending our vacation. I think if we had blinked we would have missed the pull-off that led to this very small parking area, but we saw it and we parked the car. There was no one else there when we arrived, which speaks to why it's sometimes called one of the most undiscovered natural wonders of the world. We piled out of the car and started walking toward what seemed to be a lookout point, but again we couldn't really see anything but flat ahead of us.

Then, just when you might be tempted to think that this was all some weird joke, you take a step and the swell opens up right in front of you. Pictures don't really do it justice, which means that my trying to describe it won't really do it justice either, but I remember very distinctly having a moment where my breath was taken away. The river that was down below had carved through all of these layers of multi-colored sandstone, creating these curves and twists and turns looked almost like a dance. Once you're in the right place, you see it spread out for miles in front of you. It's beautiful and it's powerful and it's inspiring. You wonder how on earth you couldn't see it just three steps before I was struck with this sense of reverence for this incredibly beautiful place. I'm so glad that we took the time to drive out there so glad, in fact, that we made family members follow us there on later trips, and we recommend it to everyone. We know that's going to the area For me.

This is what journeys are like we don't get to see the end ahead of time, we don't get to know that what we're doing is worthwhile. They seem hard and boring and pointless and we question every step that we take. But the view, the view, those moments that touch our soul, when we realize that we are somewhere that we could never have gone on our own, it's more incredible than the pictures can even begin to show us. Those are the moments that deepen my trust in journeys. Journeys that have taken me so far from where I thought I wanted to be and have brought me people and experiences and emotions and transformations that would never have been possible if I were left to myself. Keep talking about this, but I end up just saying the same thing. So hopefully you've had an experience like that that you can identify in your life. Actually, hopefully you've had a lot of them and maybe, as we go through the process, we can start seeing these experiences differently, maybe a little more clearly. Okay, so that's the first thing.

The second thing is the power of the underlying truths that I have discovered, the premises on which journeys seem to be built, and I will introduce them now just briefly, because they each deserve to be looked at individually and we'll do that in later episodes, and so I'm not going to really try to sugarcoat them either, because, to be honest, sometimes they're difficult to swallow, but they are true nonetheless, and journeys hold this space for us as we work to come to know them for ourselves. So, truth number one you are not broken. As someone who spent just about every waking moment believing that there was something wrong with me, realizing that I wasn't broken required me to release a whole lot of beliefs and mindsets that had built up over the years, but I never found anything in any of my journeys, or the journeys that others have shared with me, to suggest that I was deficient or cracked or lacking. The world told me that I was broken, but the journeys never have. Truth number two your journeys are for who you are, right here and right now. The journey is never expecting me to be farther along, to have grown more, to have learned this lesson already. It never asks me to be more than who I am right now. Any journey that I'm called to knows exactly who I am and accepts me for who I am. Whatever I need to learn or accomplish during the journey, I either already have access to or I will be taught it when the time is right. The world expects me to be anyone but myself, or it expects me to be everything. Right now, journeys will take me no other way than who I truly am. Even when I try to pretend like I'm something I'm not, the journey always brings me back to who I am right now.

And truth number three the journey does not judge. It doesn't withhold or punish or abandon. All of us make choices in our lives that we would qualify as mistakes, and we've all done stupid things, reckless things, hurtful things, both to ourselves and to others. I know I have, but surprisingly the journey doesn't seem to act based on all the dumb things we've done. It doesn't stand there with a clipboard reviewing our past mistakes and tweak our path as a punishment, nor does it give up on us when we have, for the millionth time, chosen not to make that sacrifice an arabesque. It will be there for one million and one, and two and three. The world would have us relive our mistakes, judge us because of them, shove them in our faces as proof that we are undeserving of love. The journeys never do. The path is never harder because of our missteps. If anything, it takes those missteps and uses them to support us even more.

And the final reason that journeys matter is because journeys are the path to change, to growth, transformation, big or small, longer, short, world changing or deeply personal, for lasting change to occur in our lives. This is the way we can try to skip steps and jump to the end, but what we find when we get there is that those changes are temporary. We haven't truly become capable of those changes and, as such, we will need to go back and allow the journey to take us where it needs us to go. We cannot escape it.

For that reason, coming to know and recognize and respond and even maybe partner with our journeys is the most empowering and courageous and life-affirming way that we can possibly live, and I'm grateful for it. I'm excited to see where this journey takes me and I'm grateful to all of you for taking at least this first step with me. I hope that this can be a conversation, as we all navigate our own ups and downs, and I hope that this can be a place that you can come to to find support on your journey, to know that you are not alone. You never were, and the more we come to embrace our own journeys, the more we are able to honor the journeys of others. I honor you, I honor your journeys and I truly look forward to discovering more and more as we all share together this incredible experience of journeys.