A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed one of my former students, Debra Reeves about her path finding her vocation and becoming a professional intuitive (you can read that interview here.)

One of the insights that jumped out of this interview was this:

Sometimes we’re called upon to follow our intuition, even if we have no idea where it is leading us, and even if the path we want to follow feels scary or foolish.

Steve Jobs summed it up well in a quote:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Perhaps, like Debra, we feel a stirring inside of us to leave security and comfort behind, to embrace new pastures.

This energy is embodied in the Fool card, in the Tarot. The character in this card has set off on a journey, carrying just a few of his belongings with him, and he is about to walk off a cliff.

Will he fly or will he fall?

Some of us (me included) are not so comfortable with being the fool who walks off the cliff – often we prefer the energy of the magician. We make things happen, we hustle, and we manifest. We are the masters of our lives. We make plans and we follow them.

But the thing is, we don’t create our lives on our own. We also work with the forces of fate – the unseen realm; the Gods (whatever you want to call it is up to you.)

We have to co-create with this force, and often yield to it, when it shoves us in a new direction. We cannot always be magicians. Sometimes, we have to be fools, who trust, and take that leap.

And in doing so, we may have to let go of what we’ve found, or what we’ve invested in along the way.

I’ve had many reminders of this principle, in my own life and in the lives of those around me.

Twelve months ago, I was considering leaving New Zealand, the lovely country that had been my home for the last 6.5 years.

I love so much about New Zealand – the weather, the people, and the wide, open spaces. But the lease was up on the home I was renting and I had developed pretty bad allergies to the native NZ pollen which had made me miserable for 2 years. I had only just got my New Zealand residency through my business – a long, tough and expensive process.

But my instincts were telling me it was time.

How could I leave the place that I worked so hard to call home? After years of telling myself, “won’t it be wonderful when I have my residency?” I was now going.

But I followed that instinct and I started selling/packing up my belongings. I knew it was coming from the same place as the urge to leave my teaching job in 2008 and start my own business (this website.) I believe I developed allergies because I would not have had the courage to leave without them, and that I am now right where I need to be on the winding path of my life.

And although having two winters in a row was difficult, and I shed some tears on the plane out of NZ, I created a new life for myself that feels very blessed indeed – one full of travel, new relationships, and rich with experiences.

Not many of us like change or loss, but I’ve seen so many times (in my own life, and in the lives of my clients) that life on the other side of both change and loss can be a very good one. You just have to trust that being shoved on to a new path will make sense when you look back on it, many years later.