Ever been on a trip and couldn’t find your bearings? How did you eventually find your way?
On a trip, how do you know how far or how close you are to your destination?
How do you find your bearings?
When you’ve taken a trip often enough, the route soon become familiar, you come to know where you are and when you are about to reach your destination. The ability however seems harder to develop when we are children, especially when taking trips by car.
Children are always asking, are we there yet? Are we almost there? Wise parents soon learn to show their children landmarks on the journey especially if they take the route often.
I remember as a child, I always knew we were close to my aunt’s house in Catford, south-east London by identifying certain landmarks especially the gigantic statue of a cat on top of one of the buildings.
Look for the Landmarks
When it comes to personal life journey, a lot of adults are very much like children. Despite their hard work, they can’t seem to tell if they are making progress on the journey or not. If you are in this same situation, and you are wondering the same, the question you should rather ask is – am I headed there?
It’s important to check that you are first going in the right directions.
Just as you instinctively look for landmarks to get your bearings, whenever you are traveling and you are not quite sure where you are going, the next step after determining if you are going in the right direction, is to look out for landmarks.
Here’s a simple quiz.
You probably got most of them right. Some of them were also very easy weren’t they? This is because you have already learned to identify those places with their landmarks. Even the places you haven’t been.
The good news is that the same can be true of landmarks of your life journey. You only need someone who’s already gone the distance, someone who’s been where you hope to go, to tell you what to look for, and you will recognize them.
They are internal milestones
While goals are external mile stones you hope to reach at a given period of time, and when you reach them you know, Land marks are internal mile stones, not external.
For instance, sometimes we have the desire to achieve certain things, we even set goals but somehow know we are not quite ready to take on the journey. Instinctively we know we haven’t grown quite yet to the level needed to take on such ventures.
Some years ago, I met a friend of mine again after a long while. After just an hour of talking with her, I could tell she wasn’t the same person I knew years ago. She had grown, I could identify some land marks through her actions.
Landmarks mark changes in us, in our thinking and attitude. They are then reflected outwardly in the way we act. When you check a person’s attitude you can tell where they are.
The more landmarks you pass on the inside, the more you will grow to reach your potential.
Reaching your landmarks require commitment and persistence. It also requires sacrifice. To reach each landmark, you have to give up something of value. It’s a series of trade-offs.
Ed Cole declared, “All of life is lived in on levels and arrived at in stages.”
Can you tell where you are on your personal journey? What landmarks can you identify in your life, work and relationships? What sacrifices are you willing to make to reach each landmark?
