Go slow over the rough parts.

Last Sunday I drove to a local farm that’s about 15 miles from our house. There are two ways to get there – 70 MPH highway all the way, or turn off onto this no-name dirt road. Either way gets me there.

Sunday I took the dirt road. I immediately noticed how rough the road was – my car was shimmying and shaking and my first instinct was to step on the accelerator and speed up to get that awful, uncomfortable, shaking feeling to cease. Every bit faster I went just made it worse – it just got rougher. So I slowed down.

Soon I am tootling along at 10 MPH and I felt my blood pressure drop, I exhaled deeply. And I started to look around. I could see the trees, I could see the water paths by the patterns of tree growth on either side of the road. I could hear the crickets roar. I saw a deer and her fawn dart across the road. I got to wave to a little girl walking into the gate of what I imagined to be her grandparents’ farmhouse. I felt the wind and the heat. Oddly enough, I was deeply content going slow over that rough road.

So it got me to thinking about my rough roads in life and how, when I hit one, I want more than anything to speed up and get the rough part behind me.

As the CEO of Wisegate I have been in fundraising mode, talking with investors about Wisegate. I do not enjoy this part of the job. I don’t enjoy it because I’m anything but an expert at it, because I’m not focused on members or employees or strategy and, most of all, I’m uncomfortable because I don’t know the outcome. You could say I’m going over a rough part of my road. I long, I ache for a smooth patch where I can speed up and fly.

As I look back over my life so far, it’s the rough parts of my road that have honed me into present-day Sara. Unarguably those rough parts have made me who I am.  So I got to wondering about slowing down over this rough part. Seeing if I can observe what’s happening around me, what’s going on, what there is for me to learn.

 Let me encourage you – Slow down over the rough parts in your road, they just might hone you into the next version of yourself – and that’s something the world is aching to see.