Sometimes the shoes that look the best are the ones that leave the worst blisters. We squeeze our feet into them anyway, convinced that discomfort is simply the price of a good look.
Author Michelle Douglas, in her book “Don’t Wear Shoes You Can’t Walk In,” details this struggle. Her part-lesson, part-journal book delves into self-discovery in early adulthood. She transforms everyday lessons, phrases and moments into practical tips, taking young adults on a journey of self-discovery in comfortable shoes only.
When Douglas was about 21, she felt overwhelmed and excited. Life was moving fast. She committed to journaling every day for one year, writing about a lesson she learned from events in her life.
A year later, Douglas said, “I felt like another person.”
So she kept writing.
Douglas continued journaling for 10 years. Eventually, those lessons became her book, arranged into eight chapters covering some of the most important areas of life, ranging from personal growth to mind and body.
The chapters include personal lessons Douglas learned and help readers recognize similar lessons in their own lives.
One lesson came from a hike with her family. While climbing through the mountains, they got lost, and her dad struggled to figure out how to get them back to the starting point. Douglas remembers calling out to him at that moment, “The greatest explorers weren’t following paths.”
Reveling in being lost, Douglas transformed an ordinary moment into a lesson. In the book, she compares that uncertainty to the way many of the businesses we admire had no idea where they were going until they got there.
She then turns the lesson back on the reader with a prompt: “Describe a time you had no idea where you were going and still achieved something. How did you get there?”
But for the skeptical reader, how could putting pen to paper equal total self-transformation?
Douglas broke it down into simple yet profound terms.
“Things happen to us every day, but instead of simply allowing them to happen, we can ask ourselves: How has this changed me? How did it make me feel? What can I take from today into tomorrow?”
For Douglas, journaling is about approaching each day intentionally rather than simply repeating the one before it.
Over time, Douglas found that her journals created a record of her life.
This allowed her to recognize seasons and cycles. She could look back and realize, “Oh, I actually feel the same way every January,” and pay attention to feelings that returned around the same time each year. Other times, she could realize, “This emotion seems completely new. I’m in new territory now.”
Patterns in her behavior and emotions began to make more sense.
She can even tell the difference when she is not writing.
“I know I need to sit and write, and it brings a healing power for me,” Douglas said.
But journaling does not require perfection. Sometimes Douglas makes a note in her phone and journals about it the next day. “It is OK to miss days. Doing it more often than not is what matters.”
And then there are the shoes.
The title “Don’t Wear Shoes You Can’t Walk In” came from one of Douglas’ lessons, both metaphorically and physically. When asked about the story behind the title, Douglas recalled borrowing a pair of shoes from a friend for a job interview. The shoes looked the part, but there was one problem: They didn’t fit.
She couldn’t put her best foot forward because she literally could not put one foot in front of the other. So she wrote herself a reminder: Don’t wear shoes you can’t walk in.
Douglas said college offers the chance for reinvention, surrounded by new people and perspectives. Students notice others’ patterns and behaviors and begin to try on different shoes. Some are always going to look better than their own.
But eventually, they have to go back to the ones that really fit.
Douglas hopes readers can learn from her life, but even more so, she hopes they learn from their own. “Things have already happened to you, and within those experiences may be wisdom that has simply gone undiscovered. Sometimes, you just have to take inventory of your life to find it.”
“You’re in class to improve your knowledge of a subject, and you’re in life to improve your knowledge of life, so use it,” Douglas said.
Maybe being a student of life is just that: taking note of where you’ve been, learning along the way and going back to the shoes that fit you well enough to keep walking.