One thing I love about The Grasshopper is his odd use of language, like this tidbit from the other day: “You can’t start from where you’re not.”

Like all his little gems, I had to reflect on it for awhile.

My sense is that we too often don’t know where we are in relation to where we want to go and, thus, start from “where we’re not.”

It’s helpful to know where you actually are in order to get to where you specifically want to go.

Imagine this call: “Hi officer, I’ve run out of gas on a desert road and need some assistance.” “What road are you on?” he asks “Oh, just one surrounded by a lot of cactus and sand.”

You may laugh at the caller but how many times do we not know where we are in relation to where we want to be? It may also be called, “kidding ourself.”

We think we are at some place on the map but aren’t even close. Triangulating from where we’re not will not get us to where we want to go. It will be a trek to nowhere.

Reminds me of a story from my radio days . . . I had a full time opening on my air staff and many people applied for the job. One particular person was quite vocal about how they were the right candidate and I would be foolhardy not to pick them. The one thing they were unaware of was that their assessment of their qualifications didn’t match up with anyone else’s, including mine. They thought they were at a different place on the scale than they actually were and were quite disappointed when they weren’t hired.

Reminds me of another story . . . This time, I was the one applying for a job and the man who was conducting the interview told me he interviewed 32 candidates and I was his last interview. I asked him, based on his 32 interviews, where I stacked up. He said, “Number 2.” I remember asking, “How do I get to be number 1?” He laid out some specific things I would have to do to jump to the top position. I not only had a clear goal to shoot for; I knew where I was in relation to where I wanted to be.

If you’re having a hard time getting to where you want to go, you may want to more carefully investigate where you are right now. It’s this GPS-like identification of your current location that will help you start from where you are. It will also provide you a clearer picture of the path you have to travel to get to where you want to go.

Kidding yourself keeps you where you’re not and makes getting to where you want to go a long shot.

All the best,

John