Sometimes when you are busy making heaps of progress, you forget to look back to reflect on how far you’ve come.  When striving for a goal, of course you want to head in the forward direction, but sometimes you have to go backwards to jumpstart yourself.  This concept holds true for all aspects of life: fitness, nutrition, health, heart, happiness, etc.  That is where I am at this current moment.  Without realizing, nor exactly volunteering, I took a few steps backward recently and this is what I discovered… I was panicked at first.  With so much progress being made, I found it inefficient and ineffective to be sitting in the past scraping around in the dust of who I am currently.  That is, until I discovered that my blast into the past propelled me fast forward on my progression plateau.  I didn’t realize I was in limbo-land, just chillin’ on this stable plateau of mine until I regressed.  Tracing back my steps, I was able to take a different perspective to see just how far I have come.  I was able to appreciate my growth and strength and perseverance.  The trek up was brutal, so naturally I took some time to rest.  That rest became comfortable.  It began to feel like where I would establish myself.  But, that was not my intended final destination.  The plateau is a trap in its own way.  There is no summit with a marker telling you how far you’ve climbed.  There is only forward.  Only you determine your finish line and when you reach that finish line, you draw a new one further along in the distance.  A friend told me this weekend “to never settle” and boy, that woke me up.  I didn’t notice that I was becoming stagnant until I took those couple steps backward.  And now with this knowledge?  You can bet I am no longer stationary.  Progression means to keep moving forward in life; to always set new goals and to strive for things just out of your reach.  Because if you keep stepping forward, someday you’ll reach your end of the rainbow.