I’m on my four-wheeler today as I head towards my favorite oxbow lake to see if I can catch my favorite fish, crappie! It has been raining for days so the four-wheeler trail is a muddy mess, but I’m smiling all the way back to the lake. It is so much fun to get on this lake all alone and enjoy the sights and sounds of God’s beautiful creation. Catching a few crappie will be the icing on the cake.
My smile quickly fades as I approach a narrow section of the trail where the ruts are deep and muddy. They are extremely close to the edge of a ten-foot dropoff, so I’m going to straddle these deep ruts so I can stay away from the edge. I get about 20 feet in and immediately slide off into the ruts. Nothing to do now but hit the gas and try to keep enough momentum to get back out as quickly as possible. Slipping and sliding to no avail, I’m stuck and can’t slow down or risk being really stuck.
Full speed ahead with the narrow dropoff now immediately on my right, the rut is holding me and allowing me to slide perilously close to the edge. I lean out of the four-wheeler to get as much weight as I can towards the center of the road. I’m not going over the side with this four-wheeler, I’ll take my chances on the mud bath. Whew! I’m finally past the edge now and starting to make progress out of this muddy mess and on to my crappie trip.
It’s these deep muddy ruts that remind me of the bad habits or legacy processes that we find ourselves in as we see the edge of new competition approaching.
Are we looking for a new trail or steering around the obvious ruts? To seize our future opportunities for growth, we must avoid as many of these ruts as we can. What ruts do we see ahead of us that will keep us too close to the competition catching us? Are we recognizing when we slide into a rut and working to avoid the pull? We all have ruts on our journey, so which ruts are already slowing our progress or altering our direction? Let’s use the windshield view for better mudding!