A few years ago, I read an entertaining novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Considering it was fiction, it had some great kernels of wisdom peppered throughout the story. The protagonist, Denny Swift, was an aspiring racecar driver with some profound things to say:
“In racing, they say that your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.” Garth Stein—The Art of Racing in the Rain
Such wisdom from a racecar driver.
When I was learning to drive, back in the, um, 80’s, I had the hardest time with turns. My dad and I were at Todds Stadium in Newport News, and I was trying to drive up and down the aisles of the parking lot. I could not seem to land the car in the lane on each of those turns. It was terrible—as in “we will never let you drive on the road” terrible.
Finally, in a stroke of insight, my dad told me to forget about looking in front of the car, and look far down the lane that I was turning into. Logically this seemed wrong, to take my eyes off the road in front of me and look in a completely different direction. On those U-turns, I had to literally look AWAY from where the car was pointing. But it worked!
I love how a major tenet of goal-setting is illustrated through the simple analogy of driving a car.
If you want to be somewhere other than where you are right now…. If you have a goal, an ambition, a dream… Then be aware of where your eyes (and mind) are fixed. What we focus on grows. When we get too busy plodding through the present circumstances, we can easily forget to keep our eye on the goal. And consequently, our situation never steers itself out of “the present.”
If you are 100% satisfied with life as it is, then you are one of the most fortunate people on earth! But if there is some change you would like to make, big or small, then consider following the advice of our fictional racecar driver: stop looking at what’s right in front of your nose, turn your head, and look in the direction of your goal. Again, and again.
Remember, “The car goes where the eyes go.”
What do you think?
