5 Part Series “Detours are not Derailments”

Part 1 ‘Detour’ vs ‘Derailment’ And Why It Matters

We’ve all seen the orange ‘detour’ sign when on the road. And every time we kick our heads back, sigh, and roll our eyes thinking “Ugh. No! We have places to go! Let’s move it.”

Detours are seen as inconvenient, time consuming, and even downright unfair. “Why here? Why now?”

But just as we have literal detours on the road- we have detours in life. And sometimes we mistake that for a derailment. 

A ‘detour’ according to Merriam-Webster dictionary is "a deviation from a direct course or the usual procedure."

While a ‘derailment’ is “A failure in the progress of something, especially a plan, idea, or situation.”

In other words, the main thing that distinguishes a detour from a derailment is the outcome. A detour simply means getting to a destination but in a different way, and a derailment means you don’t get there, it’s a failure period. 

Sometimes when we receive pushback or resistance, we think we’ve been derailed. “Aww man, that didn’t go as planned. I guess that’s it.” Or “It shouldn’t be this hard.” And we give up. That’s it, derailed.

But the truth is pushback, and resistance could just be rerouting us. A seemingly failing business could be saying “Hey your approach didn’t work this way, try a different angle” aka detour sign.

Or a dream you are trying to make reality but it’s taking a while could be saying “Hey, this could still work, but you need a different approach- how about we slow down and take the scenic route so you can discover what you’re missing to make your dream a reality” aka detour sign again. 

We’ve all heard the inspirational stories such Thomas Edison’s lightbulb experiment, Abraham Lincoln running for office numerous times before serving in office, or Michael Jordan who worked tirelessly after being cut from his varsity basketball team and ended up becoming of the greatest basketball players in history.

Those people didn’t see pushback as a derailment. They saw the “detour” sign and decided to take a different route. Not only then reaching their goals but also changing history while they do it. Powerful!

I encourage you to be on the lookout. Sometimes a ‘detour’ is not a derailment. Know the difference.