It’s an early Thursday morning and I’m making my typical trip from Westminster, Colorado to Santa Fe, New Mexico. My husband is working on a large project there and I tackle the 400 mile journey often in order to spend time with him.
I travel with our two dogs, Classy, an australian shepard and Dixie, a heeler/aussie mix. They are easy traveling companions, use to the two stops we make along the way so they can ‘take care of business’.
At our first stop, the rest area outside Colorado City, I do my routine. My routine is designed to conquer the fear I have of either locking my keys in my car or losing my keys. It’s not an entirely irrational fear as I have locked my keys in my car on more than one occasion. So knowing that I’m traveling on my own, it’s a real fear.
This morning, no one was at the rest stop and I knew I wasn’t going far from the car, so I didn’t lock the car. Classy, Dixie and I head out and within 5 minutes they have both done their duty. I walk them back to the car to get their water bottle and traveling water cup out to give them a drink and then it happens.
I can’t find my keys. They aren’t in my front pocket of my jacket. They aren’t in my jeans pockets. I frantically open the back door of my Jeep and see if I dropped them when I took out the Classy and Dixie’s leashes. Nothing.
I’m telling myself not to panic but I am. My worst fear just came true. I’m living a nightmare I’ve imagined more than once over the last 18 months that I’ve been making this drive.
I calmed myself down and retraced my steps and at the point where the dogs ‘did their thing’ lying on the grass were my keys. You don’t need to hear the conversation I had with myself as I walked back to the car.
It hit me as I drove South, with the sun just coming over the horizon in the East, that I just proved how strong an emotion fear is. I allowed fear to dictate my behavior and I wasn’t even aware of it.
How often do we allow fear to dictate how we run our businesses? Are we so afraid of a negative consequence that we worry that consequence into reality?
Since that trip, I have changed my mindset. I now have a process on how I handle my keys. It’s worked and the fear is gone. I now have trust in my process and feel liberated.
I wanted to write this experience down and share its powerful impact because I’m not a person that lets fear determine my life. I take on challenges left and right in my business every day. I took on Red Mountain Pass in the dead of winter even though I’m terrified of heights. I rode my CanAm Spyder Roadster up Mount Evans, the highest paved road in the U.S. during a horrible hail storm. So I know fear can be conquered.
But I allowed the fear of losing my keys to actually alter a behavior subconsciously. My fear won out.
What’s the point? That one little incident made me realize that as business owners we may allow our subconscious to dictate our business success more than we know.
What fear is keeping your business from exceeding your expectations?
Got to run. Need to go make 6 more sets of keys to put in every jacket I might ever wear on that drive from Westminster to Santa Fe!
