Getting Lost Taught Me To Look at the Big Picture

When maps still ruled my life.

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Hi there!

Have you ever been lost? In my early twenties, I owned a credit research company. It was my job to visit area courthouses to collect information on property sales, tax liens, and bankruptcies.

This was in the early 1990s, before the internet and when most of us couldn’t afford car phones. I had a trusty Rand McNally road atlas that safely directed me to most places, but there were a few times traversing the rural roads of eastern Tennessee where I got hopelessly lost.

When I finally let myself acknowledge how lost I was, I would find a place to stop, get out my atlas, and look at the big picture. Once I identified where I was, it was usually a simple matter of finding the right road to get me back on track.