Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) April/May 2020 Aspire Magazine FULL Issue | Page 57

t’s 6:00 am and your alarm goes off… where does your mind go?!? You get out of bed, brush your teeth and put on the coffee…what are you thinking about? You get yourself ready for the day, what are you listening to, watching or doing right now? And does this even make a difference? It absolutely does. Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive your actions, inactions or reactions and that response creates your results. When you begin your day, are you focused on where you are going or are you focused on where you’ve been? When you are brushing your teeth, making coffee and getting ready, are you focused on the day or week ahead or are you focused on the stress, fear and experiences from your past? When you get in your car, buckle in and put the car in drive…are you focused on the Windshield or the Rearview Mirror? Our thoughts can either move us forward or backward. They can make us happy or sad. They can make us feel confident or anxious…the choice is up to you. Whether you like it or not, YOU are in the Driver’s Seat of your life (now we know that some of you have Backseat Drivers in your life and we will address that in another blog, but for now, know that YOU ultimately drive your life). Are you focused on your Windshield (where you want to go, what you want to do or how you want to feel) or the Rearview Mirror (your past, where you have been, your experiences, memories, what you have done, how you felt, things you failed at, accomplishments, education)? The Windshield represents your future and is for you to create. It is large, limitless and expansive. The Rearview Mirror represents your past. You can’t change it any more than you can unscramble eggs. It is small for a reason and reflective for a reason. It’s small because it isn’t as important as where you are going. It’s reflective so that you can look back and bring the lessons, education, accomplishments, memories, feelings and learned behavior forward to the present. If you get in your car, buckle in, put the car in drive…and then focus on the Rearview Mirror while trying to move forward, how well do you think you’ll get to where you are going? It’s the same way on the Road of Life. We talked about the Rules of the Road above (your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, inactions or reactions…and that produces your results). If you keep hitting Roadblock after Roadblock because you are focused on your Rearview Mirror more than your Windshield, we can help you turn your Roadblocks into your Roadmap by doing the exercises below. The first exercise is the Driver’s Daily Checklist and the second exercise shows you how to Troubleshoot your Rearview Mirror. The Driver’s Daily Checklist allows you the time to dump the contents of the Rearview Mirror, focus on where you want to go, what 57 I