Risk & Business Magazine JGS Insurance Magazine Fall 2018 | Page 29

EMBRACE LIFE DETOURS
BY: RYAN FLEMING
DIRECTOR - HABITATIONAL GROUP
JGS INSURANCE
Road Closed Ahead—That’s A Good Thing!
BE READY TO DIVORCE YOUR LIFE AT ANY MOMENT
W
ow! Well now that I have
your attention, I don’t
actually mean divorce
your life, head for
Eastern Asia, become
a monk and disappear. To clarify, what
I’m actually talking about is the ability
to be prepared to reassess where you are
and where you need to go at any moment.
Otherwise you can find yourself holding
onto parts of your life that are limiting you
without even knowing it. I’ve made it a habit to take a look at my
life semiannually and make adjustments
as needed in order to be able to catapult
myself forward. This wasn’t always the
case. At age 35, I found myself struggling at
my job and in a marriage I had no business
being in. It wasn’t until divorce—followed
closely by a fairly serious motorcycle
accident—that I woke up and realized
that I needed to take control of things. It
shouldn’t have to take extreme adversity for
someone to find clarity, but it often does.
We’ve all heard of moving people in and out
o f our lives, including spouses, friends and
sometimes even family members in order to
clean out negativity. These are not the only
things that can limit our progress. Quite
often it’s ourselves and our stubbornness
to hold firm to our preplanned route. Just
because we’ve done something our entire
lives and believe it to be the way things
should be done does not mean that is what’s
best for our lives. In so many situations, we
stay in a job because we feel that it gives us
security or a paycheck we believe we need.
But that job might be the very thing that’s
holding us back from the paycheck or the
freedom we deserve. Let’s try to build a little bit of an analogy
here. I have to assume that most every
one of you dislikes the sight of a detour
sign. Every time you plan a route, whether
it be to work or to school or to any other
destination, you hate when that route is
interrupted by a detour. Now let’s really
dissect what that detour actually is. A
detour is a faster route to get where we
need to go, designed specifically to avoid
a traffic jam, road block, construction site,
or some other sort of emergency in front
of us that we did not initially plan for. The
detour is exactly what we need whether we
like it or not.
We need to be cognizant that there will
be emergencies, traffic jams, construction
sites, road blocks—you name it—all
throughout our lives as we journey towards
our destinations. We need to specifically
look for those detour signs that show us
an easier, faster, better way. We need to be
vigilant to reassess our route more often in
order to be able to avoid all of those things
that will slow us down. If there’s anything
that you can take away from this article, it
is the fact that detours are not what slow
us down. They are exactly what we need
to speed up. Look for your detours and get
where you want to go. +
Ryan Fleming offers an understanding
and a refreshing change of perspective.
His 14 years of experience in the insurance
industry has allowed him to understand
business from many different angles and
in turn, provide solutions to improve
productivity. Ryan has been speaking for
almost 10 years on various topics, focusing
mainly on improving, staff mindsets,
industry understanding and controlling
loss.
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