Don’t Ditch Your Focus on Positive Things; A Negative Focus Will Absolutely Take You to the Ditch.

What do you spend your time focusing on?

"Oh my gosh," I thought frantically as my car careened backwards off the road. "What if a road sign smashes through the window and pierces my head?"

Flash backward six hours. Ever have one of those mornings where you dilly-dallied because you just didn’t want to face what’s around the corner that day?

One of my memorable dawdles occurred at 8 a.m. Mountain Time, Friday December 17, 1993, and it turned out that my issue was not around the corner, rather it was around a cornfield in the Sandhills of Nebraska.

Just three weeks before that fateful day, my partner Kathleen and I moved from Yorba Linda, California to Highlands Ranch, Colorado because Kathleen’s promotion included a physical location change with Hewlett Packard. HP was THE place to be in the 1980s and 90s. I resigned my marketing manager job at a national distributor headquartered in Anaheim and we moved to the Denver suburb.

Kathleen’s parents were driving from Riverside, CA to enjoy a White Christmas in Colorado, and I had planned to spend my holidays with my mom and dad and siblings in Fargo, ND. Kathleen pushed me out the door finally at 8:15 a.m. to get me on the road because daylight—at only 9 hours that day—would be short, and the miles to Fargo—900 of them—would be long.

In addition to packing a winter wardrobe and a thermos of coffee into my Volvo 240 GL, I had stashed four different maps under my armpit—Colorado, Nebraska, and South and North Dakota—because in 1993, mobile phones were not really mobile and more for early adopters. And GPS was a military triangulating thingy, not an app for your phone that you didn’t have. And heck, what was an app anyway in those days? For me, it was what Kathleen, our friends, and I had gotten for free on Fridays at Charlie Brown’s on Katella in Anaheim, CA when we ordered two drinks each.

So like an old sea captain, I wrestled with my maps and followed my charted my course. After converging on Interstate 80 from Interstate 76, I hung a left at North Platte. The route I had chosen was a short cut to Fargo even though off the beaten path.

About an hour into the Northbound alternate truck route, the weather turned grey with a storm heading in from the West. I grimaced, swigged coffee, and kept driving North. My thoughts swung to—oh boy what am I getting into. Maybe I should have started earlier or not taken this desolate route.

I was in the middle of the Sandhills of Nebraska and the snow was falling down hard from a dark sky. Cars and trucks were few and far between in either direction. When I spotted a road cleaner ahead of me, I thought—well if I go into a ditch, I’d rather have him behind me than ahead of me. So I passed the slower moving vehicle and continued up the now snow beaten path.

Less than 30 minutes later as I made my way up a hill, the wind suddenly gusted strongly and I realized that my Volvo—branded one of the safest vehicles on the road—was also a very heavy, boxy car which made a great wind catcher on the icy road.

It felt like a meteorological massive boot had kicked the tail-end of my car’s left side. With that windy shove, I felt my rear-wheel powered vehicle begin to fish tail.

My mind and focus immediately went to:

Do you steer into the direction that the car is sliding?

Do you take your foot of the gas? Step on the brake?

Boy did I pick the wrong time to resign my job. This is going to cost money!

Holy crap! What if I were to spin out of control?

What if I end up going backward on the road?

Crap! What if I go backward OFF the road?

What if my car rolls?

Why didn’t I put my suitcase in the trunk rather that the backseat?

How will I get out?

Will that road plow driver see me?

Those were just some of the thoughts that raced through my mind during the seconds as I lost control of my vehicle. It’s amazing how time seems to go into slow motion and that you have time to think.

In retrospect, I think that time doesn’t slow down; I think rather that your thinking moves into a Darwinian warp-drive speed to help you survive your dangerous encounter.

During those few seconds, my thoughts were more like:

Do you steer into the direction that the car is sliding?

Why didn’t I pay more attention to Mr. Noesen’s Shanley High School driving class?

Do you take your foot of the gas? Step on the brake?

What if I do both?

Does my car have ABS braking system?

What are antilock brakes anyway?

Boy did I pick the wrong time to resign my job. This is going to cost money!

What damage will my car incur?

How can I look for a job at Christmas and without a car?

Jeez and we just bought a house.

Holy crap! What if I were to spin out of control?

What if I end up going backward on the road?

Crap! What if I go backward OFF the road?

What if my car rolls?

Never mind my car, what injuries will I incur?

Why is property damaged, but people are injured?

No. I will be safe. I won’t hit anything hard.

I will softly roll in the snowbanks in the ditch.

Why didn’t I put my suitcase in the trunk rather that the backseat?

I’ll be fine. The suitcase will hit the back of my extremely tall Volvo headrest, not my head.

How will I get out?

I’ll go out the window if necessary.

Do I have time to unroll the window?

Dang, I wish I had power windows.

Really now. Are Volvos really that safe?

Well just hold on to the steering wheel with both hands.

Don’t lock my elbows too tight.

Remain loose but on alert.

Breathe.

Pray.

Here we go.

We are rolling.

Slowly.

Softly.

Hey, I’m hanging upside down.

I better unlock my seatbelt to get out fast in case there’s water.

Ouch.

That hurt falling to the ceiling.

Hey no water.

The door opens okay.

Leave everything.

Crawl out into the snow and sand.

Claw my way up the snowbank and out of the ditch.

Will that street cleaner see me?

Keep walking up from the ditch.

Wave at him.

Smile.

Wave.

He’s stopping.

Open his door.

Keep smiling.

“Oh my gosh. Are you alright?” the snowplow driver asked.

“Yes, I think I am,” I answered, not yet feeling the bruises that were beginning to emerge on my head, shoulder, hip, arms, and legs. Not yet feeling anything.

“You looked like you planned to roll your car over in that ditch and that you were just out for a Sunday walk in a blizzard when I drove up,” he said. “You were smiling and waving. What are ya—in shock?”

The kind man drove me 30 miles North to Valentine, NE where he took me to the police station to fill out a report, and put my car on the list of cars to be towed out of the ditches. After waving good-bye to the tow truck driver and police, I walked, slowly, stiffly to a hotel to stay for the night. Once inside a room, I called Kathleen, then my parents to let them know I was okay but wouldn’t be making it to Fargo that night.

From that experience I figured out that what you focus on you get. When I retraced my steps, I realized that I had planned how to roll into the ditch and how if I passed the snowplow driver he would save me when I went in the ditch. I learned two lessons that snowy day in Nebraska:

1. You get what you focus on. No kidding. Whatever it is, if you believe it, you will receive it.

2. And if you get what you focus on, then why the heck not stay focused on positive things? Don’t ditch your focus from the positive to focus on negative things, because you will absolutely, without a doubt, end up there.

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