Life is A Journey – Video

Imagine with me for one minute that you are driving down the Seef highway,
Its about sunset, the traffic is moderate, you are listening to radio Bahrain (because the cd player isn’t working) – now I want you to picture this for one second with me, can you image driving on that highway if you were only allowed to look in the rear view mirror!
Impossible to do, impossible to imagine and impossible to teach. A driving instructor would never teach this technique because it is useless.
Almost as useless as teaching hand and finger excercises to a person caught stealing for the second time in Saudi Arabia.

Now I ask you to imagine this driving scenario because so many people try to move forward in their lives but they are so focused on what is behind them that they are unable to move forward.
I am a person that loves a good analogy, Analogies have allowed me to understand some great advice in better details over the years and today I wanted to share with you some of the lessons that I have learned from one of my favourite analogies in the hope that you will benefit too.
The Analogy I would like to share with you today is that of Life as a journey, where your goal is your destination and the actions that you take on a daily basis is the path or road you are on.
While there are many lessons that you can take from this; today I would like to share three with you-
The first lesson I would like to share is the importance of having a Destination in mind-would you leave your house to just drive around for the sake of driving. Yes some people do it but they never end up anywhere worthwhile.
About 4 years ago I was like a teenager cruising Adiliyah on a weekend – nowhere to go, nothing to do,
And one day I got tired of not going in any particular direction and decided to sit down and map out a destination. I wrote out all my goals and being a visual person I actually put them in pictures and have them on my wall, I actually have a picture of a book (because at the time I thought I would like a book, I have a picture of martin luthar king because I wanted to be an inspirational speaker.
So once I decided my destinations I went out and got maps to help me get there, these were not physical maps but more like books and cds, I also went and found people that had been where I wanted to go and asked them for directions, that is one of the reasons that you will find me here at toastmasters.
The second lesson I learned was to focus more on the destination than the road that takes you there and the simplest way to explain this is with a story that happened to me.
A couple of years ago after realizing the power of having a destination I went and asked a friend (who was French), where would you like to be in your future, what is your ultimate goal. She then told me that it was her life goal to work for Air France –
“WHAT!!! Air France, I mean no offence to the guys, but that is your life goal that is the uppermost place you want to get to in your life, that is your dream life, working for someone else – and its not even that much of a stretch, you are doing something similar now!!!
Of course that is not what came out of my mouth, what actually came out of my mouth was “OH interesting” but I had to find out her reasoning so I asked,
Out of curiosity – why this was the thing you want to achieve most in your life.
And she told me “ Well I would like to live in Paris again, I would also like to be close to my family and I would also like to travel – So I said, wait those things you have just described, that is your destination, Air France is just a road that can take you to that destination.
You need to focus on your destination because what happens if Air France says no, they stop hiring, they go out of business or they change location from Paris. Does that mean your dream is over.

The third lesson I learned from this Analogy is that every road has its issues, you will find some roads are bumpy, some roads are longer than other roads and some roads will be alright closed down.
Some of you sitting in the audience have been driving in India and you know what I mean by bumpy roads.
A little while back I worked on a project that I got really passionate about, I invested my money, my effort, my time and worked hard on this thing for over a year, then one day, all of a sudden a company came and bought out the company I was working with, overnight I lost it all,
Some people would have cried,
Others would have given up,
I knew this was just a closed road but my destination was still there and had not changed. So I got up, dusted myself of and went to find a different road that would take me to the same destination.
So in conclusion, I hope you can gain from the lessons that I have learned In my life, and if I were to summarize the steps to take,
Decide on a destination
Get some maps and ask for directions
Focus on your destination
And keep moving towards your destination no matter how the roads go.
Now sit back and think about this, what road are you currently on and where is it leading you,

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