How Do You Know It’s Time to Change Tracks?

There are points in our life’s journey when we begin to questions whether we are traveling on the tracks we are meant to stay on or is it time to change tracks at the switch yard. The answer to this question may not be an easy one to make and we begin to ask ourselves how do I know what is the right decision? Many of us go through our lives on auto pilot, ignoring the signs that are raised that are meant to make us take notice and revaluate our journey to see if we missed our stop to change tracks and go in a new direction. For some, the answer may be there, staring us in the face but we look through it, ignoring it and continue going about our lives until there it is again. Some of us know it is time to depart this track and take a new one but the unknown journey is unclear do to the uncertainty of the fog that is an unfamiliar track we have never been on before. Unfortunately, it is up to us to make that call or, in some cases, to not make that call at all. We can either change tracks or continue on the one we know even if it is not a pleasant journey we are on.

There have been several times in my life that I have faced this same decision. When I was younger, I looked for “signs” to direct me in the right choice but many times I misread the “signs” and justified turning them to direct the familiar track I was on, even if it was the wrong one. However, there have been those times where I did take notice and changed tracks. Now, it might have taken me a few trips around the railway switch to finally depart the current track and switch over to the right track but I eventually got there. For me, these decisions are not easy ones because the logical and sensible argument of my head battles with the devoted and loyal argument made by my heart. In those instances the heart usually is able to drowned out the head but, more times than not, the head is usually right in the end. The decision to switch tracks, as scary and uncertain as it is, end up being the right track and the burdens that have been weighing me down are left starring after me on the other track as I travel away. Life is not always about the destination but the journey along the way.

Our journey’s can change just as we ourselves change. It does not make sense that as we go through life on our journey that the experiences will not change us because each experience, good and bad, leave us just a little bit different than we were before it. So as we change it seems logical that our track we are on could change along the way as well. For example, the career we enter just out of school that we think will be our lifetime career may end us changing do to circumstances that we can not see along the journey and direct us to make the switch and travel on a new track. For others, it may be a significant life event that changes us in such a profound way that we have no choice but to change tracks because the ones we were on are no longer there in front of us. Regardless of the motivating factor, we owe it to ourselves to take the journey off of auto pilot. The need to stay the course often times leads to more bumps in the journey than were necessary if we just changed tracks when the opportunity first presented itself. Life is too short so we owe it to ourselves and to those who are on the journey with us to make those tough decisions, take the chance, and switch tracks so a new journey has a chance to begin. And sometimes we just have to have faith in ourselves that we can do it and that everything will be OK if we just take the chance and switch the track.