It’s that time again. Danielle Laporte had me thinking for a few days about another Burning Question. The question this time? “What’s one dumb thing you used to believe in?” If you want to answer burning questions & hop your way around to other bloggers’ answers, click the badge to find out all about it!

I used to believe that, in order for life to move forward, I had to have it All Figured Out.

Having life All Figured Out meant that I should know exactly where I was going and what I was doing. Having if All Figured Out meant that I had to have it All Together, too.

Also, I believed that having it All Together meant never crying, never having a sleepless night, or a bad day. I believed you didn’t amount to much if you had a string of bad days in a row. Successful people, I thought, didn’t have bad days, or cry, and they definitely didn’t have strings of bad days.

Don’t take this the wrong way. I absolutely believe in goals and plans, intentions and aspirations. I understand the importance of “beginning with the end in mind.”

There’s a difference, though, between having an intention, and having everything totally figured out.

In my life, every single time I’ve believed that I had it All Figured Out, the universe has shown me, in no uncertain terms, that it has other plans for me, and I need to change my route.

If I don’t listen to the universe’s little hints, it will eventually do something drastic. It places a huge boulder in my path. It says “Jess, I’m sorry, but you leave me no choice. I’m forcing you to turn around. You are going the wrong way.”

There will be unavoidable things in this life. I guarantee you. If you’re lucky, the path you’re on is a sweet ride to something fantastic, and you have no idea at all how extraordinarily superb it will be.

My yoga teacher, Noah Maze, has this incredible metaphor about destiny—how “destiny” works. He likens it to being on a river raft. The river always goes where the river goes. It has gone that way since before you were born.

You can’t control where you’ll end up when the trip is over. And you don’t know what it looks like at the end of that river, because you haven’t seen it yet.

But – you have oars. You have a set of tools to guide you to your destination (notice how close that word is to “destiny?”).

You’ve been given tools, so you’d be a fool not to use them. You’d be crazy to just lie back and go to sleep on your raft and assume that fate will carry you through the rapids, delivering you, safe and unscratched, at the end-point.

Take your oars, and for the love of god, use them. This is where you have power, the power to create your story, to shape everything that will happen between the start and the end of your river trip. Use your oars to steer  away from sharp and perilous rocks, to keep yourself safe.

You have free will, too, which means you can pick your stops along the way, and stop as long as you want or need to before you venture into the river again. Take these stops in the loveliest of places, sun-dappled forest glens; banks of smooth round rocks covered in moss where you can eat your lunch slowly and love the act of replenishing yourself.

Use your tools wisely, and you will reach the end safely.

I don’t always know the end-point. I don’t always know where a piece of writing will lead me when I begin it, but I know that I have to begin. Otherwise, I may as well have never picked up a pen in the first place.

Life is your great project. You move through it and shape the journey with the choices you make. If you steer yourself with wisdom, eventually, you’ll get to the end of the river and see what it looks like there. You’ll revel in the pristine beauty of that place, and lie back, and tip your face up to the sun. You’ll say to yourself that the journey was worth it.