At one point in history, the caboose was a standard part of a train. It served many functions. It was used as lookout point for identifying issues with the cars being towed by the engine. The caboose was also where the crew of the train tended to live. As train technology improved, the caboose was deemed unnecessary and discarded. Although technology made the actual caboose irrelevant, it is possible that it makes our life caboose much more relevant. Allow me to explain.
If you picture your life as a train heading down a track, there are splits in the track everywhere. From moment to moment, you are presented with choices of which direction to go. Some choices you labor over as you see them approach. Others you’ve made so often, you don’t even view them as choices anymore. You just staying on that track. All of those decision are made at the front end based on what you, the engineer, see coming up. In a modern context, things come up fast because the world is moving at an alarming pace. So it is no wonder that as we are moving forward we forget that we live in the caboose.
We forget the fact that when things slow down and the place where we live catches up, those momentary choices may have us in a really bad spot. The choices, that only took an instant, deteriorate as soon as the engine passes by and leave the caboose living in a desert of poor consequences. It’s easy to beat yourself up when the caboose comes along but you need to get the message up to the engine “Remember we’re back here!” I say ‘we’ because there are so many parts of your life living in the caboose: health, relationships, finances, self esteem, etc. So what do you do?
- Make a plan – decide where it is that you want your caboose to end up and spend most of its days, WRITE IT DOWN!
- Follow the routes – someone else has done this thing before, follow their procedure
- Keep that plan in mind – keep the plan somewhere that you will see it often, build habits into your life that perpetuate the plan
- Stay on track – (pun intended) you know you better than anyone, build processes into your life or take things out that make it more likely that you’ll reach your destination
It’s easy to look at the world and say “there are no tracks”. So you feel like you’re at the mercy of the world. You’re absolutely right! There are no tracks if you don’t lay any but as I said at the beginning, there are some decisions in your life that ceased to be decisions a long time ago. In the future, you want those new habits to be the things that you don’t consider anymore.
This entire post sprung out of a thought that I had while listening to an Impact Theory interview with Trevor Moawad. The interview is amazing and I loved so many parts of it that I’ve listened to it at least ten times already. However I disagreed with his statement about choice being an illusion. I believe that we have the ability to choose but those choices get followed up by a full train that endure the consequences.
STAY ON TRACK PEOPLE!
Pete
Huryk Unlimited 