Signal, Mirror, Over the shoulder, Go

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010

Recently I have read an interesting article about SMOG. SMOG simply means Signal, Mirror, Over the shoulder, Go. This is the step that we should use when we wanted to change lane on the road during driving. However most of us are using the opposite practice which is MOSG. MOSG means Mirror, Over the shoulder, Signal, Go. When we wanted to change to the next lane during driving, we normally try first to make sure that there are opening for us to move into the lane, then only we turn on the signal and move in. If there is no opening on the lane next to us, we don?t even bother to turn on the signal.

This is exactly what I did when I drive. But in actual, if you signal first, the cars on the other lane will normally leave out an opening for you to move in. I suddenly realize that what I was doing - MOSG is indeed a reactive way, where SMOG is a proactive action. In SMOG, you create the intention on what you want to do, let people know about it, then you achieve it.

In achieving what we want in life, are we using MOSG or SMOG practice? I think most of us are using MOSG practice. For example in our career, we normally just pick up any tasks that comes to us. We seldom go and think about what we want to achieve in our career. Bear in mind that the tasks that just comes to us are normally urgent task that don?t help much in our career development. For example if we want to become a manager, then we should plan our time accordingly to improve ourselves like reading on management related materials, take up professional courses or academic courses like MBA and so on. Instead of doing that, most of us will just starting to complain that there is no luck for us.

Ordinary people will believe it only after they see it. But successfully people aren?t doing that. They believe it, then only they see it.

Many of us do want to be somebody when we are a child. But when we grow up, we start to forgot about that intention. It is not that we purposely doing that. It is because that most of us think in MOSG mode, we cannot find an opportunity for us to be that somebody, so we forget about it.

Think about what you want to achieve, made up your mind, write about it, read about it and imagine about it. Then sooner or later opportunities will come to you.