Are you choosing to drift—or living a course you never chose?
I used to sail.
Some days I would take the boat out with no particular destination in mind. I could put the boat on autopilot, sit back with a glass of wine, and let the wind take me wherever it wanted to go. Occasionally, I would have to adjust the sails, and then I would return to leisurely sailing along.
It was comfortable. Carefree. Enjoyable.
Wrong story. But this story did begin a long time ago in my career. I was the sales and marketing manager for a management training product that had stormed onto the scene and was experiencing tremendous success. Because of that success, I was constantly writing letters and proposals to potential clients.
I was sailing, but I wasn’t particularly engaged in sailing.
I didn’t need to be. I hadn’t decided to go anywhere. I had chosen to drift.
Other days were completely different.
I had somewhere I wanted to go.
Now I had to pay attention. I had to read the wind, watch the water, trim the sails and continually make adjustments. I needed to know where I was going and use some of the sailing savvy I had developed over the years to get there.
And then there were those wonderful moments.
You set your course, head into the wind, make the right
adjustments and suddenly the sails fill. You feel the boat rise and surge
forward as the wind catches the sails and turns into power.
The boat comes alive.
So do you.
The energy is delicious.
You’re not sitting back watching the world go by anymore. You’re in it. You’re reading the wind, feeling the boat and making continual adjustments. You’ve chosen a destination, and you’re captaining your way toward it.
Both experiences are sailing.
But they don’t feel anything alike.
I’ve been thinking lately that maybe we live our lives much
the same way.
It is easy to live on autopilot, floating along without a course we consciously chose. When that is happening, I have named that type of living as Drift.
Drift is the gradual, often unnoticed movement into a life others taught you that you should live. Drift is powered by old patterns and automatic responses that quietly begin making your choices for you.
But here’s something I’ve come to understand about Drift:
Drift doesn’t mean failure.
You can be remarkably successful and still be Drifting.
You can build a great career, raise a wonderful family, earn the respect of others and accomplish many of the things you were told would make for a good life.
And they may indeed make for a very good life.
But Drift means you may not yet have recognized and chosen to fully engage the power of your own uniqueness and the energy that comes with living it.
Because you’re still trying to sail someone else’s course with someone else’s definition of who you should be.
That raises a very important question:
How much of my life did I consciously choose and how much of it was chosen for me?
Drift doesn’t necessarily feel bad. That’s one of the
reasons it can be so difficult to recognize.
Drift can be comfortable.
Remember my sailboat. There was absolutely nothing wrong with sitting back with a glass of wine and letting the wind decide where I went. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The important part was that I had chosen to Drift. It becomes a problem when we are Drifting and we don’t realize it is happening and we didn’t choose it.
Life is different when we don’t realize we’re Drifting.
We Drift because that’s how we learned to live.
We get busy. Routines take over. Responsibilities multiply. Expectations accumulate. Old patterns quietly influence our reactions and choices. And because life may still be going well, we may never stop long enough to recognize how much of the life we’re living was defined for us.
We find ourselves saying, “One of these days I’m going to…”
And we keep on Drifting.
One of the ways Drift announces itself is as restlessness. Something is missing, but we can’t quite identify what. Sometimes it’s disconnection. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing, so why don’t I feel fully engaged in my own life?
And sometimes it’s a quiet longing:
There is something more in me.
What if you recognized those feelings aren’t problems, they are information.
Maybe they’re asking us to check our heading and ask whether this is really the course we want for our lives.
There’s another thing sailing taught me.
You can’t be off course if you don’t have a course.
If I took my boat out without a destination and simply followed the wind, wherever I ended up was fine. But the moment I decided where I wanted to go, everything changed. Now I had a reference point.
I think the same thing is true in life.
If I hadn’t consciously decided who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live, I would never have known whether the direction I’m traveling is right for me?
The day I chose to create and live my personal mission, things began to change. I began to sail in the direction I wanted to go, rather than simply where the wind wanted to take me.
And as a result of having a mission, I started asking myself:
Is this taking me toward or away from the person I’ve chosen to become? Am I on course or off course?
Once you recognize the distinction between Drifting and sailing your chosen course, you have a choice. You can choose to Drift when you want. Or you can choose to be the captain, take the tiller and adjust the sails.
And having a destination (your mission) doesn’t mean you won’t have to change course.
In fact, you should expect to.
The wind changes. The current changes. Weather happens. Something gets in your way. Sometimes you actually have to sail away from where you want to go for a while in order to eventually get there.
There are no straight lines in sailing, and there aren’t many straight lines in intentional living either.
We’ve all heard some version of the saying, You can’t change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.
Maybe there’s more wisdom in that old sailing expression than I realized.
We can’t control most of what life sends our way. But we can learn to recognize what’s happening. We can create a little space before automatically responding. We can remember the direction we’ve chosen for our lives and make another adjustment.
And sometimes we may intentionally decide to take our hands off the tiller, pour ourselves a glass of wine and Drift for a while.
With the clarity and awareness that living my mission brings, I get to choose what is right for me at this particular moment.
So, I’ll leave you with a question:
When was the last time you felt your sails fill, the boat come alive and that delicious energy flow through you?
Post Images copyright © Adobe Stock AI, licensed for editorial.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
- More info
Having and living your mission is a driving force in Frank’s life and his coaching. His mission is “To experience the joy of living on purpose, sharing what he learns with other seekers. And for thirty years, he has been doing just that.
To learn more about how to live a life of significance, read “Practical Wisdom – The Seekers Guide to a Meaningful Life” by Frank Mallinder.
