The Changes Hurting You Now Are Leading You Exactly Where You’re Meant To Be

This is your sign that there are pieces of your life coming together right now that are bigger than you can see. That in the movements and changes and adjustments that feel so scary, so disappointing, so disconcerting, you are being intricately guided to exactly where you’ve asked, and envisioned, and worked so hard to be.

You have not been forgotten.

You are not falling behind.

In fact, this is the moment when things are most coming together.

The beautiful thing is also the hard one — that sometimes, we have to compromise what’s comfortable for what’s true. That we can grow so accustomed to the things that are not quite right for us, we can begin to confuse them for certainty, for home. That we could grow and wind roots around what was only meant to be temporary — a lesson, a learning period — and break our own hearts in the process of saving our souls.

But those hearts are resilient, and they’re made even more so when we realize that the things we are most attached to are blank canvases upon which we have painted our love, and made them good. And that quality, that ability, goes with us wherever we are. It only grows as it learns, as it begins to discern, as it stumbles back into the things that are so undeniably right, so clearly meant for us.

And those things that are so undeniably right and clearly meant? They aren’t that way because we find them and they are instantaneously perfect, but because the ground is clear enough and the perimeter is wide enough and the open possibility matches the vision we have of what it could be — and so we begin, and we continue.

If we do not give up, we build the things we most want, from the inside out.

So when life seems to be redirecting you — when the changes are swift and sudden, especially — remember that you have no idea what future pain your current discomfort is saving you from. Particularly when you consider that there is no greater regret than getting to the end of your days and realizing that you wasted your time; you did not do what you came here to do.

Brianna Wiest is a bestselling author of books including 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, The Mountain Is You, This Is How You Heal, and The Pivot Year. Find her work here.