Swinging upward and onward.

I think of the path to success looking somewhat like a golf shot with a driver. The backswing is the time of learning, the time one compresses and loads the potential energy required for positive ball trajectory. As one is in the backswing it is important to focus on the ball, resisting the urge to look onward down the fairway where the ultimate target lies. Metaphorically, it translates like this: the golfball is two things simultaneously - the challenges one faces after the backswing and the vehicle of our progression once the backswing has resolved at the face of the ball and the challenges have been incurred. The backswing is our past, the time of formative learning and decision making regarding our direction in life. We can focus on the inevitable challenges we will face(the point of contact/the harsh reality of fighting our way into our chosen career/lifestyle) as we coil our potential energy or we can glance off down the fairway before the moment of contact, dramatically limiting how soundly we can attack those challenges. If the ball is struck in the desired manner, we not only conquer our challenges more easily, we carry forward in the vehicle upward, expressing the potential energy of our backswing as the fuel to take us further, better directed, more powerfully and purposefully toward the goal once sought as we started engaging our muscles and mind at the beginning of our backswing. And, when you hit the sweet spot of a well-executed backswing, it feels like nothing else. A release of tension coupled with the immense gratitude for such a unified team effort, all parts collaborating harmoniously for the good of the whole. And I'm sure I could have been quite a bit less heavy-handed and long-winded in my conceptual expression of this whole thing... but I might only be scratching the surface of this analogy, as well. FOUR!!!!