By Frosty Wooldridge
1-14-15

In recent weeks, my son Trevor quit his well-paying pharmacy tech job in Denver, Colorado for a “room and board” position in a quiet village in the Austrian Alps. He sickened of his role in filling drug prescriptions for people addicted to poor health, synthetic solutions and no personal accountability for their own wellness.

(Open yourself up to a joyful life by spreading your arms and smiling to the universe.  When you do, like butterflies to flowers, you attract the highest and best into your life.  You create high vibrations in your cells that equate to positive frequencies for living.  You attract people, places and happiness into your life.)

Additionally, he tired of co-workers “living” on their Smart phones while being paid to work. He tired of the stress of Denver traffic, and ultimately, he tired of the meaninglessness of the job.

Within a week of his landing in Tirol, Austria, he sent video pictures of his cozy room with a view of dramatic mountain peaks rising from the ramparts of his bucolic new home.

His job? He searched on line for internationals jobs at “Help-X”. People who need workers post from all over the world. All Trevor needed: a ticket to Austria. It cost him $482.00, which took him to Iceland, then to Frankfort and a train to Tirol. Finally, to his mountain lodge. He teaches English to guests in a yoga mountain retreat. Hot tub, of course! He also cooks breakfasts, lunches and learns dinner preparation from an Austrian chef. He’s learning how to teach yoga.

After work, he takes hikes along serene mountain streams flowing through winter snowfields. Next week, he intends to ski at one of the area’s alpine slopes. In the spring, his bicycle awaits.

He said in an email, “I am happier in my new life than any words can explain. I needed to save myself from my stress-filled life in Denver. I needed to see the world for a fresh perspective of myself.”

Ironically, he’s not making a dime. Yet, because he shifted his priorities, he’s happier than I have seen him in years.

Trevor reminded me of my own journey toward self-discovery. In college, I studied to become a teacher, but when you’re young, you cannot “know” which of the 37 life paths you might pursue. I refer to Dan Millman’s book: The Life You Were Born To Live. In that book, any reader can determine which life path works for him or her. Instead of stumbling along through their teens and into their twenties without a clue as to what “turns them on in life”, readers discover their highest and best life work.

Decades earlier, after becoming totally frustrated with teaching in Brighten, Colorado, I resigned to live on a farm in the rolling hills near Cadillac, Michigan. I lived on 80 acres with beautiful hardwood maple, spruce and poplar forests. In the back part of the acreage, a small babbling brook gurgled under an old stone bridge. I built a bench near the stream to sit during the autumn colors. I enjoyed a pond about 50 yards from an old farmhouse similar to Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Many an evening, I watched fireflies, dragonflies and fish jumping under a starlit sky while I gazed into the embers of a stone-encased fire pit that I built with my own hands. For two years, I cut firewood, ate a vegetarian diet, read two to three books a week, took long hikes, cross country skied and discovered that I loved writing.

My life on the farm became the foundation for my quest to travel the world on a bicycle, write about my adventures and fulfill my deepest longings toward a literary life. All these years later, I am thankful for the courage to change course in my life.

How can you respond to your invitation to live a great life?

• Repurpose your thinking. In order to change your life, you must change your thoughts. Remember that thoughts become things.

• Accept yourself and your ideas for a happy life. That means you realize that you’re not happy with what you’re doing, so you change paths. From that choice, life offers you new opportunities.

• Remember your thoughts represent “seeds” in your mind. Plant “thought seeds” to grow into your new self, your new path and your new concepts.

• Feed your mind “positive” vibrations that yield a higher “frequency” in your consciousness.

• Pretend that your mind resembles water when meeting obstacles that stand in the way of your dreams. Water finds ways around, over and under obstacles. It always finds a way to its ultimate destiny. By choosing to “think” like water, you move yourself toward your chosen destiny.

• Don’t know that destiny? Like water, keep moving in a positive flow toward your highest and best. Life unfolds toward your way.

Like I did at age 26, my son Trevor at 29 decided to move toward his destiny by changing his path. What will he find in Austria? How will he pay for his journey through Europe? The answers evolve along his chosen path.

Those same answers await you on your selected route toward living a prodigious life by your own invitation to your greatness.

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