Last night I was coming home from doing a quick shop after having a lovely evening with some friends (I won’t mention names in case I end up telling other stories about them later! – only kidding!!).

Anyhow, as I sat at the traffic lights I noticed the fuel gauge and speedometer on the dashboard. The fuel tank was at full and the speedometer at zero. The needles were parallel and it was the symmetry and contrast in reading that caught my attention.

Strangely it got me thinking about my own dashboard. (I know, the human mind works in mysterious ways). How’s my fuel tank? What speed am I running?

Now, generally we associate a full tank as the tummy department being well looked after and while I had some nice grub rounded off by yummy fudge earlier, I was thinking more on the lines of – how full is my life right now? I remember a good few years back when going through some of the harder days, someone said to me “your cup sounds pretty empty” and I thought “what’s a cup?”.

Today, I’m thankful to be able to say that the cup / fuel tank or whatever you want to call it, is pretty full. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t more I want in my life and to do, but right now, I feel full. I’m happy with several aspects of my life and have personal goals that I am working towards.

So what speed am I running? The answer to this is it feels strangely near zero. It’s not that I get to loll about all day, very much the opposite. The speed feels near zero because really that is where my stress levels are. Things will always have to be done and even on the busiest days where the schedule of arrive / drive / drop / collect / shop / work is down to the minute, I can do it without being stressed. I actually enjoy it and I don’t mean running on adrenalin either.

This isn’t about “how I have it so right” – far from it. I’ve come from days where the speedometer reading a number that Schumacher was probably familiar with back in the day and managing to do that on an empty tank. It’s taken a lot of personal work to flip those needles to reading the opposite.

It’s not about what we do in life, it’s how we experience it.

What’s your fuel tank reading?
What speed are you running at?