“I’m at a crossroads.”
I hear these words a lot. They usually arrive with a mix of emotions: confusion, a sense of feeling lost, uncertainty, reflection, curiosity. And quite often, underneath them, I hear something more urgent: I’m at a crossroads, get me out of here!
It’s not easy being at a crossroads. It can catch us off guard. It can be destabilising, especially when we’ve made many, many decisions precisely to give our lives structure, grounding and stability.
There’s something else worth naming, too. Arriving at a crossroads usually means something has ended, or is ending. A road behind you has closed, even if only in your willingness to keep walking it. Some of the disorientation isn’t about choosing at all; it’s the adjustment to that ending, and it can need a moment of its own before you stare down the options.
But honestly, what would life be if we didn’t have crossroads? If our minds weren’t periodically shaken up to check in and ask: are we on the right track? Are we still feeling good about where we’re headed? Do we want to do things a bit differently? Are there new opportunities to consider?
Would you be OK with making a difficult decision to achieve more? To feel more? To be more? I would much rather find myself at a crossroads for a moment in time than on a closed road for the rest of time.
We’re all in different places, with different levels of energy, when a crossroads appears. Watching people meet theirs, I’d group the responses into three archetypes (can you tell I was watching “The Witcher” when I first wrote this?):
The Hasty One
The Hasty One arrives at the crossroads and feels incredibly panicked. The experience is too overwhelming and uncertain to sit with, so the name of the game is to decide quickly and take the next step, any next step. Later, The Hasty One is the one reflecting: “maybe I should have thought about it a bit more”, “in hindsight that wasn’t the best decision”, “maybe things could have been different if I’d talked to someone”.
The Avoider
The Avoider arrives at the crossroads and buries their head in the sand. Keep calm and carry on is the name of this game: not overly active about the situation, not particularly attentive to what the crossroads is actually asking. And of course “keep calm and carry on” is a false sense of progress. You carry on as you are, but not in the deeper sense of awareness and understanding that would carry you forwards.
The Loiterer
The Loiterer is all over the crossroads. They know they’re there. They know they need to pick a road, they want to pick a road, they’re fully aware that down one of them lies change and progress and growth. And they want it, oh they do. And so they wait. And wait. They hang around looking for someone to come and tell them which way to go: a sign of some sort, a holler from above, a beckoning from ahead, a push from behind. A “kick up the ass”. They absolve themselves of responsibility, and wait.
What about you? Do you rush? Do you avoid? Or do you wait?
(My own answer, for the record: in my younger, less aware and very solution-focused years, I rushed. The Hasty One, reliably. Not any more, but that took some learning.)
Decisions at a crossroads are hard for a reason: something is at stake whichever way you go. That’s the nature of hard decisions. They’re not necessarily hard because the options are wrong or dangerous or reckless. They’re hard because there is no obvious choice. Whichever way you go, there may be compromise. You may have to let something go. You may have to take a risk.
Maybe that’s the beauty of the crossroads: there is no obvious choice.
What if you could be The Seeker? Be the one who gets to the crossroads and gets curious about themselves. What is it that brings you here? Who are you now? Who do you want to be? What is driving you? What scares you? What opportunity lies in each choice? What can you live with? What can you not live without? What are you willing to let go of? What do you never want to regret?
Lean in, get your hands dirty, be OK with the uncertainty for a while, and seek the answers that ultimately build your conviction to believe in a choice. Not the fastest answer: one you can stand behind later, when the chosen road inevitably gets bumpy, because you’ll know how it was made.
Crossroads are inevitable. Sometimes small, sometimes significant, always there for a reason. Rather a crossroads than a closed road.
And if you’re standing at one now, circling the same options on repeat, a Clarity Creator session is a focused 90 minutes for exactly this moment: space to work out what this crossroads is really asking, before you pick a direction.
