“Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.”- Alfred A. Montape
This blog post started as a FaceBook status that took a life of its own. After posting this quote that I received from a friend as my FaceBook status, another friend responded – ‘It’s tough to make progress when you are looking through the rear-view mirror’ and I had to blog this story that I have told many times at workshops and conferences…
A few years ago, while heading out the door to speak at The Total Woman Workshop Conference, I learned a very valuable lesson- with a hefty price tag I might add. With all of my materials in the car and butterflies in my stomach, I punched in the address to the conference hotel in my GPS and remembering the distance from my house to the site, I immediately became anxious and put the car in gear to get my commute started. In my haste, I forgot to make sure I had proper clearance and I knocked my right, side view mirror clear off the car! At that moment, I had to make a split decision…to stay home and fix the car, or head out and worry about it later. I decided to go.
As I was driving down the road, I noticed that I wasn’t driving as fast or as smoothly as I normally do. In fact, I was driving extremely slow and because of it I was running late to my destination. It was at that moment that I received an illustrative ‘aha’ moment. You see, I was driving slow because my normal driving pattern is to rely heavily on my rear and side-view mirrors because I don’t like driving directly in front of large trucks and trailers. So when I see them approaching, I make efforts to move away from them. But on this particular day, having my windshield intact, my rear view mirror in tact and my left side view mirror intact, I was still not comfortable driving forward. That’s when it hit me – The way I was driving is how we sometimes navigate through life. With a clear path before us, a clear window to the future, and some mechanisms to glance at our past for perspective – we tend to want to dwell on the past and what the people beside us are doing.
There is a reason why the side and rearview mirrors are smaller than the windshield. It is because their purpose is only to give you perspective. You can use the rearview mirror to see how far you have gone IF you continue to move ahead, but if you stare too long in the rearview mirror, it is impossible for you to safely move ahead. Also, the sideview mirrors, give you a perspective of what is next to you – again, if you keep your focus here, you will not be moving ahead safely or efficiently. Instead you focus on what’s ahead of you and where you are going, glancing to the side and behind you only for perspective.
Your car is even giving you life warnings! Side and review mirrors are manufactured such that the objects in the mirror appear to be smaller than the actually are. That’s a clue! This is because their purpose again is for frame of reference not to be used as a focal point.
The moral of the story…Embrace your past, Learn from it, use it for reference and as a benchmark but do move forward! Your future is so much bigger than your past – because your past is over and has no more options left. But you do have options today so choose to live in today and for tomorrow!
~ Tiffany L. Lymon ‘Your Partner In Pursuit’
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