It was only about a month or so ago that I tried surfing for the first time. I’m just going to be honest and say that it was not easy at all. I used to not think that surfing took that much but those guys and gals deserve a lot more credit than I gave them. I was only out there for an hour but by the time we were done, we had drifted a long way from where we had first entered the ocean. I had no concept of how far we had drifted because the current had moved us gradually from our place of entry. Have you ever had  that experience?

I have found life to work similarly to this. I can go into a day, a meeting, a date night, a conversation or anything else with the best of intentions. I’ll have a good perspective going in and feel like I can conquer the world. Nothing changes drastically but little by little, I start to find my attitude going downhill. Familiar insecurities start to creep up and old fears begin to dominate. Frustration starts to rise and anger begins to simmer beneath the surface. I may even say something that I wish I didn’t say or act in such a way that later regret. I find myself getting to the end of the day and wondering how it went downhill. I had the best intentions in the world and yet still I allowed myself to drift.

No matter how focused we are and no matter how good our intentions may be, we all have a propensity to drift. Our hearts are simply bent in that direction and it generally it doesn’t happen all at once. It’s the person who cuts you off in traffic that takes away from that otherwise stellar attitude. It’s the coworker that says that slightly offensive comment that could be interpreted in a bunch of different ways. It’s the person that asks you to do something when you are already spent. Our emotional reserve gets lower and lower and lower until that one fateful moment when we realize that we’ve drifted a long way from where we started.

So what do we do? We must intentionally place checkpoints in our schedule when we can get ourselves back on track. We should read certain books, meet with certain people and have daily rhythms that help us remember what’s important to us. The truth of the matter is that drifting is going to take place. If we are not intentional about reminding ourselves where we started, we will end up someplace else.