When things go wrong, focus on the road

“When they teach you how to drive a racecar, they tell you to focus on the road when you go around a turn. They tell you that because if you focus on the wall, then you will drive straight into the wall. If you focus on how you might fail, then you will fail. Even if you only have one bullet left in the gun and you have to hit the target, focus on the target. You might not hit it, but you definitely won’t hit if you focus on other things.”

— Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Not focusing on the target when it feels like the world around you is shaky is sometimes what happens when you “drive” your way to a seemingly undesirable outcome that you deep down think you deserve or silently desire. You may not externally vocalize your insecurity-driven self-sabotage because of its seeming social unacceptance, but it is there and you feel it.

You drive yourself to seeming failure so you can have an excuse to bail out of the venture you are undertaking. It is fine to stop doing something or accept the fact that something you have been doing for a long period is not working and it is time for you to change trajectory when you take responsibility for such a decision and face all the psychological “monsters” and unspoken truths lurking around. That’s because when you choose with convinced humility accepting the defeat, if you want to frame it like so, you are empowering yourself to keep driving and merely take a different turn.

When you pivot or lose focus haphazardly due to a heightened sense of self-consciousness that turns into light embarrassment because of the gap between expectations and reality you are experiencing, this choice that you let unfold silently without ownership will live within you for a possibly long time because it remains unprocessed and unaccounted for entirely.

This can hamper your ability to pursue new opportunities and achieve your desires within them, because the unprocessed limiting beliefs may be constantly blocking your generative drive at key times in your journey when you need to make an important decision or need some extra clarity of thinking or willpower to carry on progressing.

Mindset effects are real and well documented in scientific literature with growing relevance. Therefore, as one is taught when learning to surf, look where you are going instead of your feet, even when looking at your feet feels like the only option because doing so will lead you to the direction where you are looking while looking down will lead you to a wipeout, in which case you will let it pass, recover the board, and paddle back out for the next wave.