In Chip and Dan Heath’s The Power of Moments, I love the concept of “tripping over the truth.” There are some truths in our lives we choose to not see. Then we trip over them and the pain of the stumble brings us insight we’d rather not acknowledge. But there it is. You didn’t see it coming but now that you’ve stumbled over it you recognize it as a truth that’s probably part of a larger pattern.

This might happen with a job where you get by day-to-day, then something big happens that makes you realize you don’t agree with the overall culture of the company. Or something tiny can happen and it strikes you, “I don’t fit in here!” It doesn’t make sense that your world can change over a single incident but when you trip over a truth that strikes a deep chord, the work you’ve been doing can suddenly become un-doable.

You can also get truth-smacked in relationships. In a marriage, you make a commitment and do what you can to make it work. But then a truth-trip pushes you to start working on an exit plan and you know that whether you initiated the break or not, it was time to make a change. In friendships, sometimes you’re chugging along because you’ve always been friends, and maybe now it’s more out of habit than love, but you don’t see that until you fall into a giant crack that’s formed.

Can you think of times in your life when you’ve tripped over the truth?

Tripping over the truth can be a humbling experience. But with hindsight (you’ve got to love hindsight), you see that what happened was a gift because it was the start of an important change. The truth you tripped over gave you insight you didn’t have before. And the crack that formed became a place for something to grow.

The Universe is looking out for you. And that crack you just stumbled into is no doubt the start of something grand.

I hope you have a fabulous, truthful, trippy week. 🙂

I’ll leave you tonight with a photo from our favorite cemetery in Maine. I wouldn’t mind being planted here 🙂

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