I’d like to share with you a piece of advice I’ve had, and have given myself over recent years.
I’ve picked up a few skills now, and a particular piece of advice comes up again and again. Always look towards the horizon.
Most recently when researching riding the motorbike. Often mistakes on the bike start by looking at the wrong thing. It sounds cliche but you do go where you look. When making mistakes, often the gaze wanders towards whatever you’re trying to avoid, and an accident becomes inevitable. That’s why you always keep your eye on the ‘vanishing point’, the furthest point away that you can see.
Recently I’ve found this advice to be everywhere, and looking back can find lots of other examples.
Another time I came across this advice was with snowboarding, where the natural reaction is to look at the ground or your feet and inevitably the ground is where you end up. Keep your head up and your eyes looking ahead and it’ll help you stay on course.
Similarly when doing driving courses, look as far forward as possible, aim where you want to go and your actions will follow. Even when driving on the road, always look as far forward as possible, don’t brake when the car in front brakes, brake when the car ahead of them brakes, or the car ahead of them and it’ll make it easier.
Always focus on your objective, where do you want to be, what do you want to achieve. If this is always in your mind then your decisions will naturally help you move towards it.
Another piece of advice that comes from this:
“Be quick to forgive”
Look forward in time and decide whether you want this person in your life and the relationship you want to have with them. If you decide that they are a person that you want around then there’s no benefit to holding onto bad feelings. Let these go and move forward to a place where you can both be happy.
The best application of this advice that I have found is when trying to apply it to life. People say ‘forget the past’, but this is largely ignored and for good reason, no-one wants to forget everything and most people are not able to choose what they forget. I choose to apply it this way:
Don’t try and change the past. Recognise what you can change and you will be able to apply yourself to where you can have an impact.
Many times I have experienced, and see people experience, the mental challenge that comes with failure. When exams have gone badly it’s easy to think “I should have studied more”, “why didn’t I do more practice?”, “why didn’t I focus on that topic more?”.
What we need to be doing is asking ourselves “What can I change next time?”, “What do I need to do to pass this in future?”
Don’t try and change what has happened, focus on what you can do now.
Remember every day to think about watching the horizon. There is no point in trying to change what you can’t. Always look ahead to what you want, to what you can achieve and how you can get there.
Always look towards the horizon.