The back window on my car got smashed out last week. I had a pair of Nike Air Force Ones sitting in the back of my car in plain sight, and apparently, whoever smashed my window really wanted that pair in size 13.
I walked out to my car and noticed the damage. My first response was to try to figure out exactly what happened as I surveyed the scene. My second response was, “Well, this is inconvenient.”
At this stage in my life, there are a few things that can rattle me.
I opened the Allstate app, filed a claim, and booked an appointment for Safelite to come out and repair the window. I then went about my day.
Get Scott’s article every morning
No spam. Just straight-talk career advice, every day.
After a twenty-year career, layoffs, a family, international moves, dealing with a squatter in my home, and all of the other highs and lows of life, a little smashed window wasn’t going to derail my day.
The older I get, the more I realize that life is less about avoiding problems and more about how quickly you recover from them. Something is always going to break. A deal is going to fall apart. A client is going to leave. A project is going to miss expectations. A flight is going to get canceled. A window is going to get smashed. None of these events is particularly special.
They’re simply part of being alive.
What separates people isn’t the absence of problems. It’s their response to them. Some people lose an entire day over a flat tire. Others shrug, call roadside assistance, and keep moving. Some people spend weeks complaining about a difficult boss. Others start updating their resume and making phone calls. The issue itself is rarely the defining factor. The response almost always is.
Many of us give temporary problems permanent attention. We replay them in our minds, tell the story repeatedly, and allow them to consume far more energy than they deserve. Meanwhile, the goals we claim to care about sit untouched while we focus on something that won’t matter six months from now.
The reality is that very few setbacks deserve as much attention as we give them. My broken window was annoying. It costs money. It created inconvenience. It stole a few hours from my week. None of those things changed where I’m trying to go. The direction of my life remained exactly the same before the window broke and after it was repaired.
“Life is less about avoiding problems and more about how quickly you recover from them.”
I think that’s a lesson worth remembering. Every obstacle presents a choice. You can stare at the problem, or you can focus on the road ahead. One keeps you parked. The other keeps you moving.
Life is going to hand you plenty of broken windows. The people who continue making progress aren’t the ones who avoid them. They’re the ones who clean up the glass, handle the issue, get back in the driver’s seat, and continue toward the destination they were headed to in the first place.