What is Your Current Trajectory?

Have you ever seen a glacial erratic? The picture above is from a New Jersey hike I did a few weekends ago. They are scattered throughout the woods at the side of the trail and you can see from the picture, they look a bit out of place. Walking past these boulders, you can’t help but chuckle at how much they stand out. It is obvious that they didn't originate here; just a giant rock in the middle of the woods. So how did they get there? These rocks were taken from their place of origin, slowly moving with a glacier until the ice melted and the rock was left in a place where it didn't belong. According to the National Snow and Ice data center, glacial erratics can be carried for hundreds of kilometers. 

Sometimes life can do that to us, take us miles from where we’re supposed to be. We go along with it, because as the ice moves it makes sense, but then once it’s gone we are left someplace we were never meant to be. I often talk about progress and moving forward because when we aren't moving forward there is a false sense of security that we are standing still. Unfortunately though, when we're not intentionally setting our trajectory, we end up like those glacial erratics, slowly moving along with the people and circumstances around us.

James clear, author of Atomic Habits, writes about the pain of progress. When we set off to do something - lose weight, write a book, get promoted - we want progress to be linear. We think that if we do start walking  down the right path, we'll see that straight line of dots connecting upward. However, most progress isn't like that. Just like bamboo that grows roots under the ground before shooting up and taking over, Clear tells us “the most powerful outcomes are delayed.” That means we should be far more concerned with our current trajectory than our current results. We need to forget about making giant leaps forward, but instead just focus on not moving slowly in the wrong direction. We need to plant roots in the right place and hold on to our patience long enough to see the fruit.

So what’s your current trajectory? Are you intentionally growing roots? Are you pointed in the right direction? Or are you asleep at the wheel, moving slowly further and further away from where you belong? No matter where you are right now, it is never too late to realign.