Everyday Life · · 4 min read
The U-turn I Kept Avoiding
I was driving the other day and realised I needed to turn around.
Simple enough.
I knew I wanted to go back the other way.
But as I looked for somewhere to do it, my mind kept finding reasons to wait.
Not enough room here.
A car in the way there.
Another car coming.
I'll turn at the intersection.
No, not there either.
So I kept driving.
And driving.
Further away from where I actually wanted to go.
At first, every reason seemed fair enough.
Each one made sense in the moment.
But eventually I noticed what was happening.
I wasn't just waiting for a safe place to turn.
I was letting every small obstacle become another reason to delay.
So I pulled over on the side of the road.
And I laughed.
Because it suddenly felt bigger than the U-turn.
It reminded me how often this happens in life.
And if I'm honest, I've felt that in bigger parts of my life too.
We know there is a direction we want to move in.
A conversation we need to have. A decision we have been putting off. A change we keep circling around. A step we already know matters.
But the mind keeps looking for the perfect opening.
The perfect time.
The perfect amount of confidence.
The perfect plan.
The perfect certainty.
And while we wait for everything to feel right, we can keep drifting further from where we actually wanted to go.
That is what I noticed in that moment.
The mind can turn small obstacles into reasons to delay.
Not always dramatically.
Sometimes very reasonably.
And that is what makes it easy to follow.
But once I noticed it, something shifted.
I did not need the perfect place anymore.
I just needed to stop pretending I was still heading in the right direction.
So I pulled over.
Turned around.
And went the way I actually wanted to go.
Sometimes the moment does not need to be perfect.
Sometimes we just need to notice we are still driving the wrong way.
Notice it… don't feed it.