When people go through the Driving Fear program, often they’re making great progress, and then do something very well intentioned that louses it all up.

Let’s take a client we’ll call Terry as an example. Terry started out terribly fearful of driving, so much in fact that he wouldn’t drive more than a block from home. He went through the program, did the exercises, got better with the techniques, and started working towards eliminating his fear. Just like the program says, he took small steps towards it, and after a few days is able to go two blocks away, which is a huge accomplishment (100% improvement right?). Two days later he’s able to go five blocks. Then a mile. Then three miles. And he gets so excited, he wakes up feeling great one day and decides he’s going to tackle a big bridge over water during rush hour.

If you’re saying “uh-oh”, you’re right.

He gets on the bridge and realizes he can’t get off when he wants to, and anxiety sets in. He gets caught in traffic, can’t go anywhere, realizes there’s no escape, and panics. It takes him 20 minutes to cross the bridge, it’s sheer terror the whole way, and when he’s done he sits in his car and cries because he knows he can’t make it back. The next day he doesn’t even try to go the three miles he used to because he’s still shook up, his confidence he had was shattered, and he feels weak and hopeless again.

I wish I could say Terry is unusual, but he’s not. This happens a LOT. I warn against it in the program, but who listens to me, right?

So what did Terry do wrong? He tried to fix what wasn’t broken.

He was making great progress, building steadily towards his goal, doing wonderful. Why did he change anything? What was there to fix?

Whenever you’re striving towards any goal, you fix what ISN’T working, not what IS. Let’s look at a different example, a guided missile. Basically a goal seeking device, right? When a guided missile is launched, it knows what it’s target is. That’s something we know too (or should). As it flies along, if it’s on path to meet it’s target, it doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t correct what’s working. But if a wind blows it off course, or it over corrects, then it realizes that it’s off course to its target and then it corrects based on negative feedback (not positive). If it over corrects again and sees it still on off target, it corrects again, until it’s back on path. It keeps correcting until it receives positive feedback, then it stops correcting and keeps doing what it’s doing until it again recognizes negative feedback. It’s a zig zag path, just like you’re have in overcoming your fear of driving, but it never changes what is going right.

As much as I admire the desire to go faster and push yourself, before you make changes to the plan you design in the program, ask yourself if you’re fixing something that isn’t broke. If you’re progressing well and steadily, you may be better off just staying the course you’re on, after all, it’s working!

Rich