We need Traction to move forward in life

Shimla has seen some good snow fall this month. As a result the road surfaces have been covered with frozen snow. You can walk on the fresh snow, but trying to wade your way through frozen snow is another story. You’ve got to be real careful lest you land on your bottom! People walk gingerly, taking small but sure steps. However, it requires some practice and courage to walk on snow-laden slopes.

While the pedestrians have a tough time negotiating the walk, the motorists have it worse. Driving a ‘two-wheel drive’ vehicle after a snow-storm poses a huge challenge to all. The car starts going uphill, and then just stops. The wheels keep spinning. The engine keeps cranking. Poor car (and poor driver!) tries as hard as it possibly can, but it doesn’t move forward. Snow flies around and that is that. (You can’t imagine the driver’s plight unless you have been in a similar situation yourself.)

Why doesn’t the car move despite its best efforts and all the driver’s skills put together? What stalls its progress? Well, the wheels need some surface traction to move forward. It is this traction that keeps the moving wheels magnetized to the surface and vice versa. Without traction, you just cannot move how much ever you might try. Have you ever wondered what keeps us human beings stuck in our un-fulfilled lives? Why don’t we move forward? What stops us in our tracks?

The fact remains that just like the stuck car, most of us need some traction as well, to move forward in our lives. We keep struggling at one place, working hard and trying our best. But we don’t seem to be moving up. The driver of the car at least knows why he is stuck; we don’t even know it.

Sometimes this cycle of trying and not getting anywhere can go on for years, a lifetime perhaps. We get gray doing just that. People call it ‘bad’ luck but there is no such thing as bad luck or good luck. We just get used to living like this, in a rut. Yes, we do need some traction in our lives, if we want to move out of this rut. You must be wondering what this traction is, and how you can get it in your life.

Well, traction is something that magnetizes you to your goals, and vice versa. It helps you pull and push perfectly, in unison. When there is traction in your life, achieving your goals becomes the simplest thing on this earth. If there is no traction, try as hard as you may, nothing is going to happen (just like nothing happens to the car). The trick lies in NOT trying hard.

Yes, for eons we have been taught that ‘hard work’ makes us successful. If that be the case, is the person who breaks stones by the roadside successful? He works very hard, even in this freezing cold. What about your domestic help? She works very hard as well. While we can’t handle our own household chores, she works in many homes. Snow is no excuse for her. Some homes (including her own home) do not even have provision for hot water. Don’t you think she works hard enough? What about the construction workers, the laborers? They all work rather hard by any standards, but their lives are like that car stuck in the snow.

So how do we (and they) get this magic wand called ‘traction’ to move on? There is no magic involved here. We derive this all important traction or magnetic force, when we employ a particular ‘thought process’. Once we program ourselves for success, using the software of our thoughts, success can not elude us. The traction comes automatically then, like it comes on a clean road surface. Yes, the snow has to be cleared before we attempt to drive on that road. Similarly our limiting thoughts need to be deleted /cleared before we can re-program our thoughts for success. Then our empowering thoughts will pull us up any hill that we choose to climb!