Some time ago, I wrote about judging the future by looking through the rear view mirror. Just this afternoon, I had an experience that brought that home, once again.
I was pulling my motorcycle out of the local Yamaha dealership after it had gotten serviced. Now, lest you be thinking what macho kind of guy I must be, recognize that my Yamaha is a little 2-cycle scooter, if they even have a 2-cycle scooter.
As I pulled it out of the dealership and into a four lane open access highway, I looked in the two side mirrors only to find out they were not aligned at all. In fact, one gave me a great shot of the sky and the other gave me a great shot of my foot. I couldn’t see anything behind me, to the left or to the right.
It was so disconcerting, with the air all around me and cars buzzing everywhere, that I had to pull off to the side of the road as fast as I could physically get there to adjust the mirrors.
As I experienced those first ten to fifteen seconds in the middle of a major highway, peering forward, but not able to see behind me, I fully appreciated – once again – how important it is to use your rear view mirror.
On the one hand, we can always say that we’re moving forward in life; so, as we move forward, why do we really need to understand what is happening behind us. After all, I was moving forward, not backwards. I could just have simply gone forward in the lane that I was in and not be concerned about what was happening behind me, to my right, or to my left. And yet, try that sometime!
Of course it’s important to understand what’s going on behind you, and of course it’s important to use your rear view mirror to access that.
As we go through life, we always consistently take actions. Some of those actions turn out to produce results that were exactly as we intended them to be. Other actions produced results that are not nearly what we would have preferred them to be, for whatever reason.
And, in still other cases, our actions produced results exactly opposite what we intended to do. In all those scenarios, we can’t ultimately understand if we were effective unless we look back and see what happened. It’s in the accessing through our rear view mirror that we learn or ultimately get a better sense of how we’re supposed to operate in the future.
More than ever before, I live life in the present. What’s in front of me on my highway is obviously important but, what’s really important is what I’m doing today, professionally, and with my family. However, as much as I live life day by day, striving towards what I am trying to achieve or, at least, the direction I point myself, I continuously access the rear view and side mirrors to make sure that what is going on behind me is consistent with where I wanted it to be.
Am I looking for choppy waves or a gentle wake?
Am I looking to access the lanes carefully or cut people off mercilessly?
Am I looking to produce awed spectators or enrolled and engaged participants?
Of course I have to look in the rear view mirror. And based on what I see, I can steer and adjust as I move forward.
The balance of the ride home, by the way, was a whole lot easier – and a ton more comfortable – once those mirrors were set properly.
Talk to you next month.