I Was Terrified. Everyone Else Was Texting.

A few months ago, I went to Bangkok. It was magical. And one of the first things I did — right off the plane — was climb onto the back of a scooter.

A little Vespa. You order it on an app, the way we order an Uber at home. Up pulls a driver who looked all of fifteen, hands me a helmet, and tells me to hop on. He was going to take me to a restaurant on the river — about ten miles away, over a bridge, and across a very large highway.

I did not fully understand that last part when I got on.

So I prayed. I prayed like nobody's business. Death grip. Teeth chattering. Eyes shut. A kind of terror I had not felt in decades. We were threading between cars, through gaps in the traffic I would have sworn were too small for a bicycle, weaving and zipping through a wall of moving metal.

And then, at some point, my eyes opened.

I looked around. And through those same impossible little cracks between the cars, I saw other people. A lot of them. Women my age. Women much older than me. On the backs of their own scooters — texting. Resting. Looking at their phones. Legs loose. Not a trace of fear. For them, this was simply a Tuesday. This was just how you get across town.

That is when it landed on me, somewhere out over that highway: I have spent most of my life sheltered from a reality that most of the world lives every single day. Riding a scooter through dense traffic, in a dense part of the world, is ordinary for millions of people. It was terrifying for me. It was nothing for them.

And I made it to the restaurant. I had a beautiful dinner over the river, watching the sun go down, full of friendship and conversation about what it is like to live in that part of the world. Then I did it again. Every night I was there.

Here is what the scooter taught me.

Sometimes the fear is just in my head. I had been practicing it. For years, I had been telling myself a story about what is dangerous, what is too much, what I should be afraid of — and I had told it so many times that I mistook it for the truth. But when I actually went out into the world, the world did not match my story. I had no data for the fear. I only had the story.

That is a distinction I never want to lose. So I made myself a promise that day, out over that highway: for the rest of my life, I will keep putting myself in situations that remind me the world is bigger than my corner of it. A life can get small. It can get sheltered. It can quietly close in until the walls start to feel like facts. I want more data than that — because the data is where I keep growing, and the data is where I find out I am more resilient than the story said.

Now — what does a scooter in Bangkok have to do with you, and with leading a team?

I think we all do this. We tell ourselves a story, and then we stop checking it. We carry it for months, sometimes years, without once holding it up against what is actually true.

A story about a change that is coming, and how it is surely going to go badly. A story about a person on your team — who they are, what they can and cannot do. A story about your manager, your organization, what is possible here. A story about yourself, and where your edges are.

And most of the time, we have never tested it. We are gripping the story with both hands, eyes shut, certain — while all around us, the real data rides by, relaxed, telling a different truth.

Resilience is what grows every time you open your eyes and check the story against the world. Every time you take the ride you were sure you couldn't.

So here is the question I will leave you with.

What is the story you have been telling yourself the longest — about a change, a person, your team, yourself — that you have never actually tested against real data?

Open your eyes on that one. You may find, as I did over a highway in Bangkok, that you can carry far more than the story ever let you believe.

- DeEtta

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