“Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”

– Elif Shafak, Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi


In any given moment, we have two options: (1) to step forward into growth, or (2) back into safety. Sometimes, it’s hard to even decipher forward from backward. How can we trust that we’re on the right path and moving in the right direction if we don’t even know what our path is?

The key thing to remember is that trust does not come after we know the answers; trust comes first.


Your direction matters more than where you now stand.

“The greatest thing in this world,” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once noted, “is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”

Direction is more important than both speed and the placement of your feet. You have all the light you need for today, and tomorrow’s light will be given to you then. You do not need more than you are given, for you are always given all that you need for peace and happiness in this moment. What you need comes through you, not to you.

When you’re confused about where you’re meant to be standing, you can say this to yourself: “I don’t know where I’m meant to be in the future, but I’m supposed to be right here in this present moment in order to learn what I need to learn, and see what I need to see, so that I can be where I’m meant to be tomorrow.”


Change is nothing to fear, just something to strengthen our trust in the process. Life changes every single moment, and so can you; in fact, you do. The cells in your body are constantly dying and being born; yet here you are still. Life is not taken away, only transformed.

You are in the process of becoming who you need to be. For now, you need to be who you are, and where you are, to get anywhere else. And it’s okay to not know who you might be—you may not know your exact purpose in its entirety, but you can be willing to find out. Be willing to find out.

Slow and steady, because there is no race.

I am learning to trust the journey even when I don’t understand it. – Mila Bron