Wherever You Are Is Exactly Where You’re Supposed To Be

It’s not wrong to have goals. But it is wrong to make those goals your everything.

Nothing has helped me in calming a racing mind and staying grounded like mantras — repeating a phrase or word in my head over and over again.

For a long time, I didn’t like to tell people I repeated words in my head out loud because I thought I would seem unstable and abnormal, but now I realize people just need to do what they have to do to get through the day, and if repeating mantras in my head is the most idiosyncratic thing I do, while balancing being a teacher, law student, runner, and writer, then that’s pretty good.

But, in an ordeal of trial and error, it took me a long time to find the right one.

Mantras that didn’t work

The problem is I’ve experimented with a lot of different mantras that haven’t always been the best or healthiest. I used to tell myself “two,” meaning getting through two minutes of a given task or the first two steps of a problem to get going and started on an important task.

That worked well temporarily, but I would feel burned out by mid-day through being so singularly goal oriented. The same went for a mantra like “you’ve put in too much work to stop,” which I told myself again and again and again to accomplish goals and motivate myself. I now know this as the sunk cost fallacy, but that, too, was too goal and achievement-oriented and I would burn myself out by midday.

One that worked well for me was one I gained as a four-time Boston qualified marathoner — “no surge.” I used to have a problem with a lot of sudden surges and erratic pacing when running. My coach told me those surges made me a lot slower and drained way too much energy when I needed to pace myself in a longer race, like a 5k. I said that mantra over and over again in my head and I ran the fastest race I had that season, with a lot less effort. I started applying it to other parts of myself, too, and I was kinder to myself and my life improved in the process.

However, there was something a bit satisfying in a mantra that was that procedural, so to speak. It was just so focused on one particular means of stopping myself from doing something or adapting to a certain situation that I needed something a little different, or an added layer of nuance to that mantra to be complete.

The one that helped me trust and accept

I heard “wherever you are is exactly where you’re supposed to be” at a diversity, equity, and inclusion training a year ago, and the words have stuck with me since. To be clear, they confirmed a mantra I held for a long time — “this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

I’ll mix the two mantras up pretty frequently and tell myself “no surge,” “no surge,” “no surge,” and “this is where you’re supposed to be,” all within a five second span. That keeps me grounded, calm, and able to adapt to different situations that require different kinds of response and intensity.

I tell myself “this is where you’re supposed to be” when I’m sitting on the couch, mind completely blank and brain completely overwhelmed from a whole day of overstimulation, and not able to get anything done for hours. I tell myself the same in the last mile of an excruciating marathon, trying to hit a personal best after running 6:05 miles for the last 26, or with 30 minutes to go on a law school final exam where speed and precision are critical to me not failing the class.

Either way, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. And being able to always trust I’m always where I’m supposed to be has led to a certain, well, alignment with every part of me — body, mind, and soul. I’m not trying to be too spiritual wishy-washy or overly Christian to a non-Christian crowd, but I do feel in touch with God and in touch with myself. I’m in tune with my own needs, when my body tells me to rest, when I sense it’s time to step up. I realized every feeling had, physically or mentally, was natural, and I listened to those feelings rather than pushing them away as I did before.

I have ADHD, but instead of seeing my impulsiveness and gut instincts as liabilities that hold me back from being kind, stepping up to the moment, and doing my absolute best. I accept how I feel I should respond to an incoming deadline, a work dilemma, things that need to get done around the house, or an interpersonal grievance, and act accordingly.

I tap into “this is where you’re supposed to be” as a mantra to see whether a dilemma is something I should handle myself or one I should consult someone I trust over. I tap into “this is where you’re supposed to be” in super high-pressure situations where I’m focusing on a level I haven’t exhibited the whole week, entirely in a flow state, throwing every resource I have to finish something very urgent.

Where it got me

Sometimes, I feel like I’m just constantly moving, responding to the conditions I feel in the moment from adapting to my physiological, social, emotional, and spiritual needs to just doing what I feel is the right thing to do. I’ve been repeating this mantra for the past two years, and achieved a level of success I really never thought was possible five years ago.

I got into a prestigious law school at the University of Maryland on scholarship, all while working as a full-time special education teacher for kids who have dealt with poverty, trauma, and the full brunt of systemic racism. I got married to the love of my life, maintained a network of close, reliable, and trusted friends, had a falling out with and then reconciliation with my own immediate family, got a Master’s Degree, ran personal records in the marathon and half-marathon, and on a day-to-day level, I was accomplishing things that seemed impossible just an hour before.

Because I kept faith in “this is where you’re supposed to be,” somehow the 10-page paper due in only an hour would just write itself because this rush of adrenaline overcame me. In law school, my grades have maintained the above average B+ to A-, which I agonize about as not being good enough all the time, but realize at the end of the day is not bad with having a lot going on.

I spoke about this unwavering trust that I’m always where I’m supposed to be with Amardeep Parmar on his podcast, and he framed it in a way I never thought of before: extreme confidence. This mantra gave me a confidence that, for me, things would work out and everything would be okay. Maybe I believed it so much I just manifested it, like the placebo effect. I chuckled a bit internally because I tried “be confident” as a mantra I repeated over and over again in my head when I was younger and it didn’t work out. But that’s certainly not how it feels — sometimes it feels like I finally figured out my personal formula to life and to pacing where I can balance the plethora of responsibilities and obligations, but also personal needs, relationships, and spiritual alignment.

However, sometimes I do doubt, and question, a lot. I question because I feel like shit about myself when I have a lot to do but can’t get out of bed. I question when my goal is to go for a 15-mile run at a quicker pace, and I can only run two miles at a pace some people walk, and feel absolutely awful while doing so. I question when I need to take a nap in the afternoon instead of getting more things done and barreling through the day. I question because it never actually feels like I’m doing well or working hard enough or that things will go be okay, and it sometimes feels extremely stupid to just trust these words I repeat to myself in my head.

What would quash these doubts is that if I kept thinking with this mantra, things would work out when it really mattered and in crunch-time situations where there was a lot of pressure. I scored better on my Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) than I ever did on a practice test. I raced better in marathons and ran faster times than I ever could do for 26 miles in practice. When there was an impending, super urgent and important deadline with a lot of consequences if I didn’t turn something in by that time, I would always meet it.

I would never quite accomplish the extremely lofty and borderline unrealistic goal I set for myself, but because I trusted where I was supposed to be, I usually came closer than I thought I would, especially in these high-pressure situations where I had an edge and focus I could only summon when the conditions required that response. Allen Iverson had a point that practice is just practice (not that it’s not important) — the prime-time game is where it really matters giving your maximum effort. I had to always remember that what felt like a failure to live up to expectations at the moment was far less important than the long-term mission.

I also fell into the false promise that “trusting you’re always where you’re supposed to be” is a straightforward gateway to success, achievement, and good results. I sometimes felt like all I needed to do was repeat this mantra in my head and life would be entirely figured out — and since I’m more ambitious than I’d like to admit, I stretched it. I got tired of just responding to things as they happened or situations as they arose and wanted to manipulate those conditions — take my life into my own hands instead of constantly adapting and feeling like I was just going through the motions as a puppet to my impulses. I’d repeat the words, but also idolize different strategies that were too goal-oriented or put too much pressure on myself.

In the past two months, I got pretty tired of this mantra because some of the results I was getting weren’t up to my overly ambitious and borderline greedy standards. I got not one, but two B’s in law school. Ever since I got COVID-19 and recovered from it, I haven’t exactly been running well or running personal bests, particularly in the marathon. In one marathon in March, I dropped out. In another in April, I ran okay, but it wasn’t a personal best. In the one that was supposed to be “fast” last weekend, I shot my shot, went out at a pace that was my personal best pace, and blew up to only run 2:53. I even started a chess hobby and go through huge stretches where I stay stagnant — or even lose seven consecutive games.

Every time I have one of these setbacks, I agonize and wonder whether there’s something wrong with me, and then I question whether this mantra framework was the best way to move forward. I would essentially scrap it for periods of the day. At work and at school, I would set mini-goals throughout the day, like “by 9:30, I will finish writing this assessment” or “by 10:00, I will sent X email.” I started neglecting rest when I needed it in favor of hitting all my goals on a given day.

Again, these goals were well-intentioned in theory, but they were far too goal and achievement-oriented, and I had a revelation today that I, too, had become far too goal and achievement-oriented. If my mantra is trusting I’m always where I’m supposed to be, I was pursuing a much healthier and more accepting mindset that was significantly more in tune with my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs.

Seeing that trust as a means of just being more successful and accomplishing more completely defeated its purpose.

I was pursuing accepting myself more as a human, too, instead of this achievement and productivity machine society often sees me as. I also pressured myself because a large part of my identity is how much I can achieve.

But in this never-satisfied chase of more and more success and never feeling good enough, I forgot the whole point of trusting where you’re supposed to be — and that’s accepting wherever you are, even if the result isn’t favorable or if there are a lot of failures, because that’s a part of life, too.

It’s not wrong to have goals. But it is wrong to make those goals your everything.

I don’t know how successful I’ll be because I know how I am, but I do endeavor to put less pressure on myself because I have a lot going on. Some days, I’m busy from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. between work and law school. I won’t have time to stop, breathe, and spend time with my wife, even if I really need a nap or just time to sit around not doing anything. Even when it’s not the goal I want, I endeavor to still be proud I tried, didn’t give up, and give it my best, even if it wasn’t what I wanted, and turn my attention to the relationships that matter instead of the numbers on a transcript or times on a watch.

At the end of the day, I want to still always trust I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Takeaways

I think we all have a lot going on and can do ourselves a huge favor by going easier on ourselves, but more importantly, just trusting ourselves. What works for me might not work for you, but if you, too, put way too much pressure on yourself, trusting that exactly you are is where you’re supposed to be might be something to try reinforcing with yourself.

To be clear, I say it’s not for everyone because I don’t want the mantra to be seen as rationalizing and accepting situations of crippling mental illness, abuse, addiction, or worse. That’s not how I intend the mantra for myself and I see it as being in tune with what I need and responding to it, but I can understand how “you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be” can be misinterpreted in horrible situations that require more intensive solutions than just a couple words you say to yourself over and over again.

As someone who works in the school system, I deal with incredibly sensitive situations all the time that I’m bound by confidentiality not to write publicly about. I have to trust my gut and consult the right people, or make sure I know the policy correctly. Tapping into that instinct of what to do and when to ask for help isn’t a means of never making a mistake — it’s just a hell of a lot better than whatever mantra I was telling myself before that was way too rigid, dogmatic, and too goal-oriented.

And that’s what I think is why “you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be” works so well for me and might be worth a try as a mantra for you, too — it’s incredibly flexible. The whole point is adapting to your circumstances, trusting your feelings and your gut, doing what you feel is right or the correct action at the moment, and being responsive to your needs. It’s an adaptive mindset focused on fluid situations rather than fixed expectations and outcomes.

It’s a mantra where you’re not treating yourself like a drill sergeant, but a human being with different needs in different situations. Sometimes trusting you’re always where you’re supposed to be is a kumbaya, yoga retreat level of chill, but sometimes that trust also means every part of yourself kicking into gear in an emergency or putting everything aside to attend to the people in your life you love.

If you benefit from that flexibility and acceptance, maybe you need to hear this too: wherever you are is exactly where you’re supposed to be.