Choosing a Direction Saves You Energy

It is common advice that Andrew Schneider says here, but there is more to it: "A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go." We often fear letting life take us anywhere it wants you to go, and it makes sense, because we want some sense of control over our own lives. Perhaps wiser advice is to swim with the tides when they are already going in the general direction you want to go, rest in waters that are easy and heading directly where you want to go, and then use what energy you have to swim against the ocean’s currents when life is taking you somewhere you don’t want to go. The biggest question is deciding where you want to go. When we are aimless, we end up stuck in the ocean, caught between drifting away without a care, and then scrambling to get away from dangerous shores as we are pulled towards them. Choosing a direction to go in saves you energy, because you can more often prevent ending up in treacherous waters in the first place when you spend some energy guiding yourself towards a destination. You can always choose something different in the midst of your journey, but you spend less time and energy frantically avoiding a life you don’t want when you know what you do want.

"A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go."

~ Andrew Schneider