People with a high internal locus of control tend to make unconventional choices. Their decisions are often very different from those of the masses. These choices and decisions often lead them to walk on an untried and lonely path.
I'm talking about the Pathfinders - entrepreneurs, philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, and difference-makers in general, people who have dared to deviate from the status quo and enlighten new paths, people who have questioned things that were taken for granted, and changed them for good.
Pathfinders are all profoundly self-driven.
While there's much to take away from their personality traits, let's talk about the lonely roads they tread.
I haven't met a single difference-maker who hasn't gone through a lonely chapter in their life. When asked about their personal life before who they are now, all have said one thing in common: when they were reinventing themselves, knitting their thoughts into… words, products, businesses, paintings, stories, and novels… they were utterly alone and unaware of the final form of the masterpiece they were creating.
The renowned Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa over 16 years (1503 - 1519) alone in his studio and kept it to himself. He died in 1519, not even knowing what a masterpiece he had painted. After his death, almost centuries later, his painting got the recognition it deserved, and we all know the rest.
You may also have to go through, or you may already have been going through, these lonely chapters of your life and have been having many self-doubts about the paths you have taken, the choices you have made, and the purpose of it all...
While you have to unearth the answers to all of these questions on your own… I want to remind you that you are not alone… and neither were those who went through this quest in the past. They all came out different from how they entered it... the world knows it, and most importantly... they knew it!
Those lonely chapters, those questions you are having, that feeling of incompleteness... those are the indicators that you have outgrown your last stage and are about to move into another stage of your journey.
This is the chapter when you reinvent and remold yourself. This is the Autumn before Spring.
To those of you who walk lonely roads... I want to leave you with a light that, you should not give up on your masterpiece, whatever you may be working on, just because it's not getting the recognition it deserves.
Recognition was never the goal to begin with. It was the byproduct of the process. So let it be only that. Please don't mistake it for the goal and let it influence the masterpiece you are creating.