Follow the Yellow Brick Road… No, no, not THAT road
Well, let’s talk of the ROAD for a quick moment. We all know it. The story is roughly 124 years old, the movie is 85 years around the Sun. L. Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz 120 years ago and folks are still referencing lines from his work.
The little munchkins upbeat (and catchy) two-note directions have me across time and to this day and literally why I started writing this singing “Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the Yellow Brick Road”. I’ve been eating that lineup nearly my entire life. It has resonated with many generation after generation and many use it as a learning path. The road, metaphorically is a path to get where you want to go.
And because for so long I will not bore you with the details or try to steer this into a power point explanation on how at the end of the road is where all your answers magically are received. No folks. At the end of the road is death. We want to look at what we have coming down and going up and on the side of the road instead.
The road can be as symbolic as you want— straight and narrow, curvy, switchbacks, etc. The point is, know your road. Just as you know how to drive in your vehicle or on public transportation from home to work, knowing your road brings comfort, it brings a subconscious, and it reinforces that we have a fail-proof understanding in getting from point A to point B.
We need purpose and focus.
I spent the majority of my life hunting for my purpose. No thanks to the socials whose algorithms perpetuate your feed from liking one self-help guru’s post or reel. I wonder if social media wasn’t around today, where would my life be right now? Would I have already found my purpose earlier or not even ask myself what my purpose is??? Being left to your own devices in the face of a machine hasn’t been so kind to many of us. But we just have to get to it.
Taking in, and understanding what it is you know and do well is a great start to finding your purpose. Do your best to stomp down the impostor syndrome (because that asshole is 1000% real) and know that it’s you driving the vehicle. And don’t worry about locking it in, but be sure it’s secure. You don’t want impostor syndrome getting its grubby hands on it.
Focus was all Dorothy needed to achieve. Distracted many times along the road and she made a few mistakes that didn’t benefit her. When (spoiler alert) after melting the witch and finding out the Wizard fooled her, that’s when she started to focus. Now she was able to get herself back home— Finally.
We face so many distractions that are not benefiting ourselves and more times than not, we have nothing of value for ourselves from those distractions. It’s an active fight to turn your eye from distractions. When we finally target our focus, the world becomes less intrusive.
