The Courage to Recalculate

I'm terrified of getting lost - driving, walking, even in the city where it's an easy grid. Panic can strike. It's embarrassing, but it's me.

My husband and I couldn't be more different. He's traveled internationally for years. He has this incredible confidence that he can wander almost anywhere and find his way back. Not me!

When we were in St. Andrews, Scotland, a few weeks ago, we decided to go for a long walk before meeting friends for breakfast. We walked nearly 10,000 steps.

Down one street. Along the water. Across a bridge.

It felt so good not to pay attention to where we were or what time it was. I was just enjoying being there. But then, I looked at my watch and knew we needed to get back to the hotel.

My husband told me not to worry; that he knew where we were. I didn't believe him. Cue the panic.

I insisted he pull up the GPS on his phone. He laughed as he showed me that we were less than five minutes away.

GPS became fully operational in 1995, which really is not that long ago. It didn't just change navigation - it changed human behavior. It fundamentally altered how people move through the world. It solved for uncertainty, reduced friction, and gave us belief.

GPS has become our sherpa. It anticipates traffic, reroutes around road closures, and recalculates every time we make a wrong turn.

Every wrong turn I make the GPS doesn’t judge me or shut me down; it simply recalculates. It treats every wrong turn as information and new input and quickly solves for it.

Here’s what I think is most important. It isn’t that the GPS gets us there. It's what it does when we miss a turn or hit a roadblock.

Every time I ignore it. Every time I miss an exit. Every time I think I know a better way.

It simply says, recalculating.

No judgment. No frustration. No "Well, you should have listened."

It doesn't waste time replaying the mistake. It doesn't ask why I missed the turn. It takes the new information and finds the next best route.

This year I invested in my business. Some of it has been exactly what I hoped - the Future-Self Index™ assessment, a new speaking sizzle reel, work with people who've pushed my thinking harder than I expected. One investment wasn’t right, maybe even an epic fail. I joined a mastermind that wasn't a fit.

For a while, I punished myself. "Well, you paid for it." "You committed." "Maybe if you just stick it out.”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was trying to justify a wrong turn because I'd already taken it. The GPS would never do that. It wouldn’t tell me to keep driving in the wrong direction because I’d already invested twenty miles. It would just recalculate.

Success in work and life isn't pretending every decision was the right one. It isn't staying on a path simply because you’ve already invested time, money, or energy in it. It's having the courage to say, “This isn’t taking me where I want to go anymore," and choosing a better road.

What if we started acting more like the GPS, looking for new inputs to reset, recalculate, and reroute? Not once a quarter or annually, but every day or at least weekly.

​Here's another thing: Your GPS can only calculate where you want to go when you give it a destination.

That's where I see most of us get stuck. We spend so much time thinking about today's meetings, this week's deadlines, next month's revenue, or the hundred of things on the to-do list that we rarely stop to ask a much bigger question: Where are we going? And what if the problem isn't that we don't know the way, but that we've stopped imagining where the road could take us?

That’s why I work with my clients to set an impossible-possible goal as a new destination.

What has to happen to get there?

What decisions have to be made?

Who do we need along for the ride?

Where do we think there will be roadblocks, detours, and challenges?

because sometimes the problem isn't that we're on the wrong road. It's that we've stopped imagining where the road could take us.

From here, we reverse-engineer the path.

Knowing where you want to go is the fuel. Not what you want to accomplish, but who you want to become. Who are we becoming as a team?

Once the destination is clear, everything else shifts.

When it does, the wrong turns become less frightening. The detours become information. The roadblocks become problems to solve instead of reasons to quit.

You stop staring into the rearview mirror wondering what you should have done differently. I know this well.

There are so many more possibilities looking forward through the windshield, taking the wheel, and putting your foot firmly on the gas pedal.

Every wrong turn is just new information. The only question is whether we keep driving in the wrong direction, or recalculate.

This week, ask yourself:

What part of your life or work is asking you to recalculate?

Because the goal isn't to prove your last decision was right.

The goal is to make your next decision the right one.