Last week I took a nice, relaxing vacation. We didn’t want to spend a lot of money on anything fancy, so my husband and I packed up the Jeep, loaded the dogs, and headed out. We stayed with family in a beautiful house in rural Kentucky, or what my husband kept referring to as the Hollers of Kentucky. I have to admit that after the traffic and congestion of Chicago, I was very happy to get to fresh air and a slower pace.
One day, we decided to head out on an adventure, so we just started driving. For hours we drove with the sunroof open, the windows down, listening to the road mix my husband pulled together. You know Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Cash – perfect music for our excursion. The roads weaved through acres and acres of beautiful farmland, pristine horse farms, and miles of forest-covered hills. Most of the roads were one lane, so things got pretty hairy when another car headed our way.
As we were driving, we would check the GPS just to see where we were. However, at one point the GPS showed no road where obviously there was one because we were bouncing along listening to, if I remember correctly, Waylon Jennings (remember my husband pulled the music mix together). The GPS blinked U-Turn. I could even mentally hear it screaming at us to turnaround, but we kept going. Eventually we came to the end of the road after passing some of the most beautiful scenery I have seen. The trees were bright green and a lazy river flowed past in no particular hurry. It was a moment where you climb out of the car, take a breath, and think I am so glad I didn’t turnaround. I kept my course, and I came out the other side better than where I started. My husband looked at me and said, “If we had listened to the GPS, we never would have seen this.” That got me thinking.
I know this isn’t the usual business strategy, training, marketing blog, but this has been a tough week – September 11 anniversary, embassy killings, political gaming, teacher strikes, so I wanted to share my own personal story with you. Something that says, even if we feel we are on the wrong track, even if the economy feels dismal, even if we feel that things are going wrong, or we feel that we need to turnaround – that the risk is too great. Don’t do it. The path might be rocky. You might be pushed off the road by cars coming at you. Your husband’s musical choices might be questionable. But keep going. At the end, you might find yourself in a place you didn’t even imagine.