I was reading some of Jen Polk’s blog archives a while back and came across a post about a career coach giving her this visualization exercise:

She asked us to picture a skier on top of a peak, unsure of what lay ahead. After taking three deep breaths, I imagined myself as the skier and was soon stretching out my arms. I started to fly off the mountain top, and when I looked down, nothing was clear. I realized that flying, looking around, and exploring are what I need to do right now. That is the next step for me.

I found myself trying to imagine this, and I kept getting hung up on the fact that I don’t even know what a skier might see going down a slope, except what I’ve seen in movies. Trees? Bears? I don’t know. So instead, I pivoted the exercise to think of some more familiar experiences.

I asked myself: What if I were diving in the ocean? (I haven’t been diving but I have a lot more of an idea about what might appear if I were.) What if I were ambling in the forest without a plan? What would I do?

I realized that in both cases, I would trust my intuition and focus my attention on whatever seemed interesting. In the ocean, I would trust that whatever I find will have its own beauty and magic, even if it’s dangerous or scary, and I have ways of coping if it is dangerous and scary. Walking in the forest, I would amble about cheerfully, relying on my intuition to guide me to where I want to be, enjoying the filtered quality of the light, the greenery, noticing interesting plants and animals and either noting them to use later or if I had the technology, using a nature app to learn about them.

Just as this exercise led Jen to realize that she needed to spend her time in exploration, my responses to my altered versions of this exercise reinforce what I kind of always know to be true about myself: things go best for me when I follow my intuition and pursue whatever seems interesting.

What if you do some variation of this exercise? What will you learn about yourself?

Image by PublicDomainImages from Pixabay