It’s funny how the little things we use every day end up teaching us the biggest lessons. Take a GPS. You miss a turn, and what does it do? It doesn’t sigh dramatically, flash a warning, or play a disappointed “I told you so.” It just pauses for a second, thinks, and quietly offers you another route. No accusation, no drama — just the next best step from where you are right now.
If only we treated ourselves the same way.
Most of us carry this invisible scoreboard around, where every wrong turn feels like a failure stamped in permanent ink. Miss a deadline? Off track. Change a plan? Messed up. Slow down? Falling behind. It’s wild, because when you think about it, missing a turn has never stopped anyone from reaching the destination. All it does is change the journey a bit — maybe you end up taking a road you didn’t expect, maybe it adds a few minutes, maybe you even discover something along the way that you would’ve otherwise missed.
But the destination? It’s still there. Waiting.
The truth is, life rarely moves in a straight line. You’ll take detours you didn’t plan for and some you didn’t want. You’ll have moments where you’re sure you’ve gone too far off course to fix anything. You’ll rerun decisions in your head and wonder why you didn’t see the signs sooner. And yet, every single time, life hands you a quiet little prompt: “Recalculating.”
There’s something comforting about that. No matter how many wrong turns you take, there’s always another way forward. It may not be the shortest route, it may not be the smoothest, and it may not look anything like what you once imagined — but it will still move you closer to who you want to be.
We forget that progress isn’t measured by how perfectly we follow the original plan. It’s measured by how we keep going even when the path changes on us. Sometimes the real growth happens in the messy middle — the detours, the backtracking, the moments you have to stop to catch your breath and rethink your direction. Those aren’t signs of failure. They’re proof that you’re trying, that you care enough to pick a new route instead of giving up.
So the next time you miss a turn in your life — a plan that falls apart, a goal you didn’t hit, a version of yourself you’re struggling to live up to — remember your GPS. No judgment. No panic. Just an update: here’s where you are, and here’s the next step you can take.
Keep moving, keep choosing, keep adjusting. Your path may twist and change, but your destination hasn’t gone anywhere. And the beautiful part is, neither have you.
Kenrick Vaz 