When we forge ahead, sometimes we can get stuck or feel like we’re no longer making progress.

The cha-cha-cha of life and business often has us taking two steps forward, and one step back. In the periods where we take a step back, we can often feel as though all progress has been lost. It can be demoralizing to see things go backward. 

An easy way to help remedy that is one we often forget. 

Take a look back in the big picture to see how far you’ve come from your beginnings. At Red Dog’s Roofing, it was started by Patrick Cochran, a third generation roofing professional. It was him and a truck, doing repairs for folks. The vision was much bigger than that though. The company has grown substantially since then, and Patrick and the crew here have even bigger plans and vision for the future!

We often forget, though, that an important part of that growth is the ability to look back and take stock of the progress made. We’ve often thought we were stuck or moving in the wrong directions, but a time of careful reflection looking back reminds us that we’ve come leaps and bounds over what we used to be!

On a personal level, I’m a hiker and one of the first major hikes I took I almost got into serious trouble. This was before the internet, and little information was available to us for weather and trail conditions. That and we were young and inexperienced. It was late May, and we decided to do a 9 mile loop over three peaks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 

Long story short, there wound up being several feet of snow, and we were in sneakers, shorts, and just a sweatshirt. It was getting dark, and we didn’t have a light source or any food or water. 

It wasn’t good.

We wound up on the last peak of the loop, exhausted and running out of light. We were cold, cranky, and miserable. 

As we were trying to gather the strength and fortitude to finish the hike, I remember looking back over the other two peaks we had just summited and was amazed at the amount of distance we had already covered. We were ¾ of the way done. Just ¼ left. After realizing that what lay before us was much, much easier than what we had already tackled, it became manageable. I realized we could accomplish this. Plus it was all downhill from there (literally).

How many times have we been stuck and didn’t know how or if we could continue on? How many of those times have we looked back to discover that we had already been through much worse, and managed to still move forward? 

Red Dog’s Roofing is a local, community focused roofing company based out of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who have provided exterior remodeling solutions for generations. Their newest initiative is supplying guidance to the next generation of tradespeople by offering resources, encouragement, and solutions to make them more empowered choices in their careers and in their lives. http://www.reddogsroofing.com