Elevators and Other Unpleasantries

When I was 12, I got stuck in an elevator. Now this wouldn’t have been so bad, since it made me miss my least favorite class, but I was by myself, on crutches with my right leg in a cast (coincidentally my foot was broken in 12 places).

And then the lights went out. Not cool.

When the elevator lurched to a stop, there was no way for me to communicate that I needed help. This was the 80’s and there wasn’t a nice intercom available, nor a handy cell phone (since they hadn’t been invented yet). I waited and waited and finally someone else tried to use the elevator, and it was then that the problem became obvious. The door only opened a few inches, the whole carriage was stuck in between floors, and there was a scrawny, gimpy kid in there in the dark.

Now someone knew where I was! They were very kind and talked to me until they pried open the doors and got me out and all was well.

Except.

Except I spent the next several decades very, very uncomfortable every time I got in an elevator. So uncomfortable that I would avoid taking the elevator and instead used the stairs, even in very tall buildings. Really, anywhere I could, I would take the stairs. For a while I pretended it was about health, or wanting to challenge myself to take lots of flights of stairs. Eventually, though, I had to tell myself the truth: I wasn’t really choosing to take the stairs. I was taking the stairs because I was avoiding the elevator. Fear was running the show.

I tell my clients all the time that they are welcome to do just about anything they choose. But they have to choose it, consciously. Fear can’t be running the show.

What choices are you making that aren’t really choices at all? What stories are you telling yourself that drive these behaviors? For years, I told myself that I wouldn’t be ok in an elevator, that elevators were scary, that I’d surely get stuck again. I’d even tell other people my story about getting stuck in the elevator when I was 12, it felt like it justified my avoidance.

Once I faced my fear, I could make choices about when to take the elevator. Sometimes I do actually like to challenge myself to take the stairs, occasionally I’ll see a particularly creaky elevator and decide that is one I’d like to avoid, on purpose. But most of the time now I can take an elevator, even if I need to remind myself that “elevators aren’t my favorite.” This is a far cry from “I won’t be ok,” and enables me to choose instead of avoid.

What is your elevator? Where is fear running your world? Want to choose instead? Let me know, I’d love to help you celebrate the power of choice.