Like me, you’ve probably learned A LOT from classrooms, seminars and books. Maybe too much. 🙂

In recent years I’ve endeavored to learn more directly from nature, indigenous traditions, the breath and body, and mysticism.

That’s why it was such a privilege when Sadhguru invited me to ride motorcycles with him for a few days as part of his “Mystic America”. It was the exact intersection of all those things—the precise learning environment—I’ve been looking for.

On the third day of riding together, I stayed back to facilitate my weekly Transformational Coaching call.

When I finally got on the road, I didn’t know it, but my GPS was set to “avoid U-Turns.”

That’s why it didn’t tell me to turn around when I took a wrong turn. What could have been a 30-second turnaround became a two-and-a-half-hour detour, but I had no idea.

While it was wonderful to wend my way down a sunny, narrow, twisty two-lane road in Utah’s back country with my wife while the autumn leaves were changing, I never did catch up with Sadhguru before he left Utah.

By the time I finally realized my miscalculation, I had plenty of time to reflect on the fact that each of us sometimes makes similar miscalculations in our lives by holding onto beliefs that don’t serve us.

Just as a GPS can be configured to “avoid toll roads,” “find the shortest distance” or to “avoid U-Turns,” each of us has an “internal GPS” that’s configured in a certain way.

Many of these, like “It’s important to eat lots of veggies” or “Be kind to spiders” help us to be healthier and happier than we otherwise would be.

But our beliefs can also undermine our health and happiness.

Things like, “People can’t be trusted,” “I’ll be happy when…” or even “I don’t deserve to be loved” can prevent us from enjoying the richness life offers.

A big part of what makes these beliefs so insidious is that we often don’t even know we have them.

It’s like the quote that’s often attributed to Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”