Any great journey starts with one small step. As a child, I wasn’t aware life was a journey. I never stopped to question my life, or why I had mental, emotional or physical difficulties, or what that bigger picture was. All I knew was that physically it was something I had that my siblings didn’t.

First steps

When anyone takes a first step, it’s an achievement. Progress happens, then we begin the little steps. But so many opportunities are missed because we don’t see, understand or read the signs. We should have motivation, commitment and focus, but we may also need to have persistence so that we don’t give up at the first hurdle.

Working on persistence

Without persistence, even with life's journey it is easy to give up. Whatever form our persistence takes, it is allowing ourselves not to be beaten, which leads to progress, both on a personal, emotional and spiritual level. Life isn’t one straight road, turns and dips in the road may always be inevitable. The outcomes we expect to happen may not always happen the way we want.

Be prepared

We should be prepared for all eventualities and that is what life teaches us. Not everyone agrees or may respond to us in a way that we think they should. It is important to understand they can choose to do things differently. Understanding our journey teaches us a lot about ourselves.

Work with your intuition

I use my intuition and have never looked back. Working with a disability, my intuition has become my 'eyes and ears.' Our intuition allows us to identify our own mistakes so that we change the way we perceive and do things. Intuition help us on our life's journey.

Ilana Estelle is a mental health and wellbeing advocate who combines educational insight with her personal experience of living with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. She holds diplomas in Counselling, Diet and Nutrition, Nutritional Therapy, Psychotherapy and Counselling, and Stress Management. Through her writing, Ilana supports others in navigating their emotional, mental, and physical health challenges. In addition to writing for The CP Diary, her work has appeared in healthy lifestyle magazines. Ilana is also the author of three books: Cerebral Palsy: A Story – Finding the Calm After the Storm, Spirituality, Healing and Me, and Survival: The Covid Years – Time for Change.

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14 comments on “Life's journey”

  1. Great post!

    I believe that we're on a journey and of course each one of us has a different one to follow.

    We don't know where our journey will take us, but I believe it depends on which roads and tours we take. It's like a tour of duty.

    We're here for a purpose and depending on which way we choose to go decides on how that tour will end.

    Having knowledge and advice from others helps. Our intuition also helps a lot.

    I've been on a wild journey so far and can see how things could have been different if I'd chosen a different road to go down.

    1. Thanks Lisa.

      I agree with you that we are all on our journey. From the day we're born I believe our life is already mapped out for us.

      The choices or decisions we make becomes our journey. Even if others make our choices for us and we have no say or control on those decisions, we cannot change those decisions if they were not meant to be changed.

      The life I have lived around my extended family up until the age of 46, I was supposed to live. My life with my parents, my siblings was all meant to be, even if I didn't agree with their choices.

      Beyond that point, the decisions I made to set up and write for The CP Diary, I was supposed to do those too.

      In short, the choices we make are the choices we are supposed to make and it is those choices that become our journey. That is my belief.

  2. This is an interesting post.

    My life's journey has certainly been full of surprises; mostly pleasant ones I might add and I'm very happy with my life's decisions even though they might not have been consciously made at the time.

    I'm fortunate the way things have turned out.

    1. You're really fortunate. When we look back at our life, we often see a lot of mistakes along the way with a few things that we feel we got right.

      In my own case I have had to work through a lot of decisions which I couldn't change because they weren't my decisions and that can bring about a lot of unease.

      I believe, therefore, that acceptance has to be an integral part of our lives too on life's journey.

  3. When people ask me about my illness and whether I'll live a normal life, I'm usually stunned.

    My response is, well yeah! I usually don't stop to think about my own mortality sometimes.

    I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad, but I just live every day like nothing is wrong with me. Well I try anyway.

    1. I think ignorance of what we deal with is sometimes why we're asked these kind of questions. I think you being humorous is the right approach.

  4. Very True. It's how you relate to other people and how you make this world a better place because you were here, that matters.

  5. It would be great if I actually knew where the finish line was at this point, but I guess I'll just have to wait until the end!

    I can only hope and pray for the best right now.

    1. For every issue we deal with Randy, there's a starting point and a finishing line. What's important is both, how we begin to deal with the issue in hand and how we resolve the issue.

      In my opinion as with everything it's always up to us.

    1. It's probably the fear of the unknown that stops us; but it's on an unconscious level most of the time. We don't always know or understand the reasons behind why we feel we can't.

      I think the majority of us are more than up to it. We just have to believe we are and give it a go.

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