Part Two: Can we Really Move Forward When All We Do Is Go Backward?

I want to follow up with last week’s article on “two steps forward and one back,” and challenge you to think outside the proverbial box with the question, if all we are doing is objectively moving backward, can we, in fact, find that we are still moving forward?

There was a low point in my life, in my mid-twenties, when everything I did resulted in what seemed like a backward step in life. It seemed everything I did that had previously resulted in a positive outcome was now working in reverse, so that the harder I worked and tried to get ahead, ironically, the further behind I got.

I remember waking up each morning, thinking, today I am just going to work harder and smarter than yesterday, although, truth be known, the previous day I had worked as hard and as smart as I possibly knew how to. Sadly, despite my hard work and intentions, at the end of each day, I only found myself several steps further behind than when the day had begun.

For several years I fought this battle wherein my life seemed to get worse every day, despite me working as hard and as smart as I could. How is it then, that one day I woke up and realized that the whole time, I had mysteriously been moving forward?

You see, I realized that during this low point in my life, while I had been doing the day-to-day activities that resulted in a backfall, I had also been quietly challenging myself mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, until one day I ultimately, woke up and found, I was not longer the person I had previously been.

It was as though I was on two separate paths; one taking me backward, while the other one was unconsciously moving me forward. It was only when my mind awoke one day and I realized I had become a different person, seeing the world through a different prism, that it finally clicked that I had really been mysteriously moving forward.

There are so many factors at play in our lives that we can see and objectively measure, but these factors aren’t always representative of the whole story. Things can be quietly hidden and absent from our radar, until one day, they reveal themselves.

Often humans think we are on the right path, and that just by working everyday, we will arrive at the point of our aspirations. Life is often strange, however, and sometimes, when forced to look at our lives, we often find we are not on the right path, or even more importantly, find we are in fact doing the opposite of what we are supposed to do. It is only when we are faced with these difficult situations that require us to contemplate these difficult questions, that the true answer reveals itself.

So it was only in the objective and measurable steps that I was taking that I was moving backward. In the big picture, however, my mind, thoughts, emotions, and other intangible considerations were being broadened and enlightened, and actually moving me forward as a new person.

If you find yourself moving backward, I am certainly not urging you to just stop and hope everything works out. You have to keep trying to move forward. As long as you are trying to move forward, I believe these