Welcome to the latest edition of my blog, Leadership Lessons from the Road. Every story includes a recent business trip I took along with a valuable lesson I learned along the way. I recently had the honor of speaking at a conference in sunny Florida. The conference was fantastic. The audience was wonderful. The venue was second to none. And the resort accommodations were phenomenal.

Yes, the resort accommodations were phenomenal…except for one pesky sign posted right outside my ground-level room window. It was a metal sign on a small wooden post, situated about fifty feet from my room, directly in front of a scenic pond. In big bold letters, it read: DANGER! ALLIGATORS AND SNAKES IN AREA. STAY AWAY FROM WATER. DO NOT FEED WILDLIFE! Once I saw this sign, I couldn’t unsee it for the rest of my stay.

Anyone who knows me knows that snakes are my number one fear. Alligators would probably be a close second, but being a good ole Virginia boy, I tend to think about them a lot less than I do snakes. It was a great trip, but it would have been so much better had I never seen this sign. I became obsessed with it. It turned into my focal point of the stay. Anytime I’d walk to or from my room, my head would be turned, focusing only on that sign and any sudden movements I happened to see anywhere around it. I would stare at it through my window before I went to sleep at night. I would walk past it only when I saw others walking past it already. I don’t know why…safety in numbers, I guess. Truth be told, I probably ended up spending more time fixated on this sign than I did my actual speech.

Now that I’ve shared my neurotic behavior with you, allow me to share the lesson I learned from all this. On my last day there, I had to walk past this continuously taunting sign one more time on my way to the exhibit hall. With laser-like focus, my head was turned to my left as I walked along the concrete pathway. I wasn’t watching where I was going, just fixated on what could attack me from the nearby marsh. As my eagle eyes scanned the area to my left, I felt something land on the back of my neck. I immediately shrieked like a little girl, literally jumped in the air (not sure how either of these would help me) and smacked my neck. A giant salamander fell to the ground. Okay, it wasn’t giant. It was barely the size of my finger. But it was a salamander. On my neck! It hopped back into the brush on my right as I looked for a paper bag to slow down my hyperventilation.

And for me, this embarrassing event (yes, there were witnesses) is just a microcosm for how I live a lot of my life. I become so fixated on one thing that I miss out on so much more happening around me. And then I’m caught by surprise when I shouldn’t be. Truth be told, just like this instance, I often focus on things that might happen, but never do. This is a dangerous habit, because not only does it prohibit us from being aware of other dangers in our lives, but it limits the beauty right in front of us as well. Directly behind the sign I mentioned, was a gorgeous pond, complete with multi-colored water fountains. On the other side of the pond, was an outdoor bar with free crab bites at happy hour each night. I found this out after the fact…all because I was too scared to walk over and check it out.

Discernment is needed in our lives. It’s smart. It keeps us safe. The most successful leaders exhibit this trait. But it should never come at the cost of missing out on everything else God has in store for us.

Thanks for reading! Here’s hoping your sign doesn’t keep you from your crab bites!