LA via Omaha...

If you were a fan of the late Charlie Daniels, the subject line of this message may ring a bell. While I often reference my taste for guitar solo-laden tunes by 80’s hair bands, I always enjoyed CDB (the Charlie Daniels Band), not to be confused with all the hype today around CBD - although I’d expect many of the musicians I was fond of engaged in their fair share of CBD-like substances… (A line in Long Haired Country Boy comes to mind immediately as I share this…)

I remember the first time I introduced Cindy to the song Uneasy Rider. We were parked on I-81, just north of the JMU exit in Harrisonburg and headed somewhere south. I pulled that amazingly fun ballad up on my phone, hopped off the exit as soon as I had the opportunity, and took every back road possible to keep moving in the general direction of our destination. Shockingly, Cindy didn’t like the song even a little bit - to which I still question her sanity. She was also less than pleased about the back road adventure since she often gets terrible headaches from being the passenger on winding roads. Oops. But being true to form with that highly DRIVEN behavioral style I reference having at times (you can laugh at that if you want, I actually am as I write this!), I was far more interested in going as fast as we could than I was in going the right direction. That said, I cared less about the trip actually taking longer on those back roads than I did about being stuck for a few minutes!

Over the last several posts, I’ve been pounding the drum about the importance of consistency as we work to reach our goals. And let me call extra attention to the word WORK. The only place I’ve ever seen goals come ahead of work is the dictionary! As I closed the last post, I mentioned that “not just any old action will do” and compared it to driving fast in the wrong direction. By the way, if you’ve never heard Uneasy Rider, do yourself a favor and check it out ASAP!!! It tells such a great story, there are very few conversations where I can’t find a way to wiggle a line from that song into…

With regards to taking the right action to reach our goals, I clearly wasn’t doing that when I got off the interstate as quickly as possible to wind all over the country. But often do we do similar things when it comes to moving forward in various other areas of our lives? It’s easy to fall into the trap of working incredibly hard to get something done without taking the time to really think into whether or not we’re really taking the best possible approach to achieving what we’re working so hard for.

I can remember so many times as a kid where I’d carry heavy things or take on a difficult task hoping to show my dad how hard I was willing to work. I also remember him telling me to work smarter, not harder. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned the real value in that. The true wisdom comes when we’re willing to invest the time in advance so we have a clear picture of how the work we’re about to do can help us reach our actual goal. There may be times where we need to reroute our trip through Omaha, but there are also times where it really is our best bet to go through Jackson, Mississippi on a Saturday night - but we likely won’t know unless we put the right thought into it! More on that next time…