A good friend of mine had  a crazy Friday.  He took the day off from the office to start a leasiurely weekend nice and early, but by 9am that plan was changed violently.

Just crusing down the highway on the way to a late breakfast and his hood starts to flutter.  He said there wasn’t any time to do anything, shy of tap the breaks.

Bang!

His hood slammed into the windshield and the road disappeared.  He tells me he cursed loudly a few times as he lowered his head to peer along the dashboard to see a small slice of the road up ahead.

Blinkers, a slow deceleration and a bit more profanity and he was safely off the road and stuck with his bad luck.

Thankful for not getting hurt, but still really angry about the thing he went about talking to the insurance company and hooking up with a body shop to get the car fixed.  It wasn’t until later that the real issue sank in…  (and this is why I love this guy…)

Perspective.

Joe says he spent more time thinking about how his own thoughts and feelings surrounding the event than the actual situation itself.  He was buried in metacognition, in watching his own behaviors surrounding the situation, and spent most of his thought time there instead of worrying about the new challenge he had to deal with.

His result?

It could be worse – my hood could have flipped off and caused a lot of damage to other cars or possibly hurt or even killed someone.  No crash and burn, man.  I went right into deal with it mode and kept my wits about me.  The best part?  I had some little dings on the hood from rocks and I was going to cover with touch up paint next weekend.  Now I’m getting a whole new hood instead!

How’s that for perspective?

It took him a while to get there of course.  When he first called to tell me about it all  he was pretty angry.  But he was already seeing the other side and talking about how there had to be some sort of silver lining to the thing.

Joe’s always working on “being a little bit better than yesterday” and how he dealt with this accident was a perfect example.

I’m glad he’s on my team.

How about you?

What challenges have you faced recently that seemed like huge issues?  Is there another way to look at those challenges to learn from them?  To gain from them?

A computer harddrive dies and so much information goes with.   And that information isn’t always recoverable.   And so the old blog is gone.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  To persevere is to move forward, if only by attrition of those left behind.  Businesses, ideas, recipes… so much dust.  Begin again!

Sticking in there is half the game;  the other half is enjoying it.

There’s always more pleasurable practice to be had on my writing skill.  New ways to say things previously said, seeking new wisdom in between the words lost.

And so the blog starts again!

To persevere in one’s duty…
- George Washington

That quote ends with reference to calumny, but that’s not quite relevant since the harddrive certainly did not slight me intentionally (I hope).  Either way, I’ve learned [pick a hosting company that does backups!] and continue writing.

Keeping with it.  It’s what we do when our heads are on straight.

To growth and success…