The Answer Is As Plain As The Nose On My Face

After working with a client in Florida recently, I was waiting for a flight that had been delayed, so I had an extra bit of time. Suddenly, I saw a woman sprinting from the security end of the terminal in an absolute panic. Her eyes were wide open, searching. She stood right in front of me and locked eyes with me.

“Do you know where you need to be?” I asked. Fear and uncertainty were all I saw in her eyes. “I am supposed to be on my flight to Atlanta…I can’t remember the gate….” she stammered. Quickly surveying the area, I spotted the TVs with the flight locations just across from us. We quickly found her gate. It was right behind where I was standing in the first place. Right where she had stopped. They had started to board, but she still had plenty of time to get on. She thanked me for my help, took a deep breath and boarded her plane.

Sitting on my own flight home, something struck me about the encounter. What she was looking for was literally right in front of her. Why didn’t she see it even though she was so desperately looking?

Similarly, I have had this experience: as soon as I need to go somewhere in a hurry, I can’t find my keys. I get more and more angry with myself for misplacing them. The phrase blinded by rage becomes instantly applicable as I search in vain for what seems like an eternity. What I have had to learn to do is either try and take a breath, calm down and look around, or as a last resort (I am a guy after all), ask my wife for help… Gulp… (Pride is not swallowed easily, is it!) Nine times out of ten, the keys are in a spot I looked more than once.

I am not going to try to explain the phenomenon in our brain that causes this type of blindness, but I am going to use it to make a point about finding the things we want in life. The woman at the airport and I have something in common. We both desperately wanted to find something, but neither of us could see what was practically staring us in the face. We both needed help. I happened to be in the right place at the right time and noticed she needed it, and, sadly, I eventually had to swallow my pride and ask for it.

Sometimes when we want something in our lives so badly, we sabotage ourselves with doubt and fear so that it becomes impossible to see the right path. We convince ourselves that it is going to go wrong or that “It will never happen for me.” We blind ourselves to the fact that the answer is sitting right in front of us. Many times, we just need a little help to see it. We need someone who can look at our situation with an honest and open mind to help us talk through the issues we face.

Whether it is recognizing the key to your dreams or trusting the first step on the trip to success, you have to be willing to get help sometimes in order to move forward.