“If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station, the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.”
Japanese Proverb
It’s pretty easy to see how this relates to life.
Once you realize you’re on the wrong path—with a person, a behavior, an educational or career path etc.—take action as soon as possible to get off and adjust.
…Duh.
The harder to understand piece to this advice is the “once you realize” part.
…Because it isn’t always immediately obvious that we’re on the wrong train in life. Or what starts out feeling like the right train, slowly and so subtly that we don’t even realize it, becomes the wrong train. Or we miss the station we’re supposed to exit at and board a different train and find ourselves several stations in the wrong direction.
The real key to properly applying this analogy to your life is in understanding how you can stay on top of your realizing.
An excellent place to start is to do your homework up front: Are you sure this train is heading in a direction you want to head? Are you sure this is the best train to get you there? How sure are you that you can trust the sources that are giving you this information?
And an excellent ongoing practice to have once you’ve boarded a train is to do checkpoints along the way: Am I still heading in my ideal direction? Am I sure there isn’t another train that can get me where I want to go faster? Do these landmarks match what the direction of this train promised?