When you take out your car to drive to your job or the market or a restaurant or the gym, there is a good chance that you will be following a course that involves making several turns at different corners before you get there. If you drive in a straight line, you will probably find yourself driving into a field or onto someone’s lawn or actually hitting a building. The successful navigation of the road to your destination requires making adjustments to overcome impediments and successfully reach the goal.
The same thing applies when an airplane flies from one point to another. Even without the constraints of roadways, stop signs, and other impediments, the pilot must constantly be making adjustments to account for wind and other elements. Sometimes we know about these adjustments because of announcements from the flight deck informing us that the plane will be flying above or around unfavorable weather so that the ride will be less bumpy. Even when we don’t know about it, however, adjustments are constantly being made. And yet, almost every plane that takes off gets to it’s desired destination.
Anybody using computers for any aspect of their work, school, or general lifestyle learns to expect to manage frustrations as the machines don’t always behave as expected. We simply expect to have to make adjustments.
We have learned to expect to deal with impediments and make adjustments to say on course when we deal with vehicles, computers, and other machines, and we learn to accept that process. But how about when you face impediments toward the achievement of your own goals? Are you as willing to make necessary adjustments to stay with the course when you get a bad grade in school or an unenthusiastic job performance review or words of discouragement from a family member or acquaintance or colleague whose accomplishments are pretty minimal compared with your goals?
The road to success is not a straight line. In dealing with unsuccessful attempts on his way to eventually successfully inventing the light bulb, Thomas Edison famously stated, “I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Take a lesson from Edison in the pursuit of your own goals. Increase your chances of success by being willing to make the same types of adjustments that you would make if a computer problem arose or if you came upon a detour on your way to work.
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