You do not find yourself. You make yourself…
Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else…
“Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar” - Antonio Machado (1912)
In my coaching practice, we talk often about the journey towards your inner light and today the poem of Antonio Machado reminded me the traveller who walks with no predetermined road.
There is no course, no framework, no coaching model that can hand you your path. Tools and guides can walk besides you, but your inner world is yours alone. Your light is not someone else’s destination.
This can feel scary, but it can also feel liberating as self-discovery has no GPS. Reflect on this:
Where in your life are you waiting for someone to show you the right path- when it is already forming under your feet?
Recently a client talked about their “non‑conventional” path: choosing actions guided by values and what feels right, rather than following norms or external expectations. They resonated with Mahatma Gandhi’s “My Experiments with Truth,” seeing life as an ongoing experiment in living by their inner compass.
Every decision you make, to speak or stay silent, to stay or leave, to begin again is a footprint and these footprints are the road. Self-discovery is accumulated daily through the small, brave acts of living as you are.
Looking back, at the last six months, what choices have shaped who you are becoming?
The traveler walks and the path appear because of the walking and you are not the same person who entered this sea. This applies in all field…as a leader, a parent, a coach, a mentor, we often feel responsible for the path of others and sometimes that weight becomes a false certainty that we know the road . The deepest service we can offer another human being is not to point to the road, it is to walk alongside them witnessing the path they are uniquely creating.
The best coaching, leadership or parenting trust the other person’s capacity to make the road by walking.
What is the next step your inner light is pointing you toward – even if you cannot see the whole path yet?
Every question you asked, every door you opened or closed, every time you have chosen to begin again.
