Cones. Temporary lights. Big yellow signs telling you to go somewhere else.
Is it just me, or are there SO many roadworks around Cheltenham at the moment? (I'm not going to pretend I was calm about all of them. There may have been some muttering.)
Sat looking at yet another diversion sign, it got me thinking.
What do you actually do when you're faced with a sign like this? You've got three options, really.
You can follow the diversion signs. You can let your sat nav find you a new route. Or you can pull over, turn the engine off, give up on the trip completely and decide you're a failure at driving.
Nobody picks the third one. It sounds ridiculous for a car trip.
Yet it's exactly what so many people do when they're trying to hit goals in their business or career.
The destination was still a good one. The road just closed. And instead of finding another way round, we turn the engine off and tell ourselves it was never going to work anyway. It's the route that has failed. The goal is usually fine.
So what's the answer? Get really clear on the outcome you want, and stay open minded about how you'll get there.
The route from A to B is rarely the one you expected when you set off. Things close. Things change. Someone digs a hole in the middle of your plan without asking you first. That's normal, and the destination can still be right.
I think this is where a lot of us trip up. We fall in love with the route. We spend so long planning the perfect way to get somewhere that when one bit of it changes, the whole thing feels broken. If you'd held on to the outcome a bit tighter and the plan a bit looser, a diversion would just be a diversion.
It's the same thing I've learned from DJing. You plan a set. You know which tracks you want to play and roughly where the night is going. Then you read the room and the room wants something else. You don't pack up the decks and go home. You change the route and keep the party going.
Think of a goal you've quietly given up on in the last year or so. Was the destination wrong? Or did the road just close?
If it was the road, the goal might still be very much alive. You just need a new route. Ask someone who has got there a different way, or take the long way round if you have to.
