I took a shortcut yesterday that made my journey two hours longer. The irony of leaving work early “to get on the road and  beat the traffic” wasn’t lost on me.  Somehow, I missed the sign and my turn off and ended up lost, confused and unsure what direction to take.

Then I had an “Aha” moment. My external world was perfectly mirroring my internal thoughts. A work meeting that day had taken some very unexpected turns and I wasn’t clear on how to progress. And taking the wrong direction on my trip was a sure sign I needed a different perspective to navigate towards my destination.

Having facilitated two days previously a Creative Brainstorming session I tried out one of my favourite techniques to get unstuck and generate fresh thinking. What were the limiting assumptions I was holding about this topic? If the opposite were true what perspective would I then have and what new untapped ideas would be available to me?

And, sure enough, I quickly recognized approximately where I was, I had a number of options for getting to my destination and I’d plenty of time to enjoy the journey. And the work issue? What had seemed a tangled headache of a problem now presented itself as holding some intriguing possibilities.

I remembered reading a talk Steve Jobs gave where he said you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

I turned the radio up and enjoyed the trip.

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