Remember the days before GPS? We used maps to find our way to our destinations. At times we got lost but it was always an adventure in discovering new places, things, or people that we wouldn’t have had we not veered off the path. Our estimated time of arrival was just that, estimated. I still love maps and keep one in my car. Unlike the GPS, which shows me my exact location and a short distance ahead, the map shows me the bigger picture. I can see all roads leading to my destination and choose to get off the highway for a little adventure or treasure hunting. If I take a wrong turn or feel lost, I stop and study the map, take time to breathe, and soon I’m on my way again.

I use a GPS quite a bit when driving and realize that my reliance on technology has diminished my confidence in my own sense of direction. When I make a turn outside of the GPS route, I feel a twinge of panic when I hear, recalculating. Something in the command to turn around at the first possible spot gives me a flutter of fear as though all will be lost if I don’t heed the warning. I don’t ever recall feeling this way when I’ve traveled with a map in hand. It seems the more I use the GPS the more I forget how to use my map and my innate navigational methods.

When I considered leaving institutional work, my mental GPS went into recalculating over drive. As I started creating success on my own terms, my GPS was sending up signals of panic and at first I was fearful that maybe I’d taken a wrong turn. I could be reading with a cup of tea or practicing yoga and the message would blast through – recalculating! Shouldn’t you get a job? Recalculating! Aren’t you wasting time? I’d been tuned into the mental GPS for so long, I’d forgotten to trust my SPS, my Spiritual Positioning System. Truth be told, there were many times in the past months I briefly considered listening to it and turning back, yet the more I stopped to breathe and listen into my SPS, the more I checked my internal map, the more I was led to new ideas, new experiences, new ventures, and new people I’d never have encountered had I stayed on that old familiar road.

Technology is wonderful and I still use my GPS when driving to an unfamiliar destination. But when it comes to matters of life, of living, loving, working, or playing, I’m using my SPS. I know I can trust it to see a broader view of the landscape, point me in the right direction, and take me to new places that the GPS just isn’t capable of mapping out. As I rely more and more on my SPS, my GPS has quieted down and, when I do get a notion to go back to those old beliefs, the familiar road, my SPS gently whispers…recalculating.

Happy trails…