Defeat or Drive… How Do You Handle Challenges?

Today has been a tough day as a parent and an entrepreneur.  One of my daughters was in a car accident last night.  She is okay, thank God, but it has turned into a whirlwind of events that has now affected everyone in my family.  What I mean by this is we had a Christmas trip back to California planned for all of us on the East Coast and now, 12 hours prior to our flight, we had to postpone.  Also my son-in-law just returned home from 8 months in Afghanistan and we have all been so looking forward to connecting again.  My sharing is not so anyone feels sorry for us, but to ask the question… how do you deal with challenges like this when they come up in your life?  Do you stop working, do you stop functioning, does everything in life stop moving?  I was asked this today and its been a great character challenge for sure, being the matriarch of the family.

One of my writers said… “OMG, let me talk to you another time so you can deal with this”, but really there isn’t anything I can do to change the situation.  So to stop moving forward in life didn’t make sense. We learn early on as entrepreneurs that if we stop every time a challenge came up in our lives we would never reach the levels of success that we strive to personally or professionally.  Call it hard, call it callus, I call it driven to overcome obstacles, life’s challenges.

As I shared this with him, I felt he was a bit challenged with my response, but as I responded, I was reflecting back to reading Dr. Weil’s book Spontaneous Happiness.  He talks about a time when his house was washed away in a flood.  When he was notified of the event he told the people at the residence he would not be returning to see the ruins.  When I read that line I thought … how in the heck can he not go home?  The pictures, the ‘things’ he lost?  But then as I continued reading he brought up a great point.  He said, if he was to go home and see the ruins, he would have to physically go through the emotional loss of ‘things’ he lost and that would set him back even further.  And that he couldn’t bring any of it back, he couldn’t change the situation, so why not stay right where he was and allow the insurance folks to assist him with this challenge.

You can interpret that in many ways, but I saw it as an eye opening experience.  We get so caught up in ‘things’ or the loss of ‘things’ that it throws a huge curve in our journey.  Dr. Weil has evolved to a place in his life where I continue to work to achieve.  Where ‘things’ do not matter, but the experiences we have with our family, friends and clients does.

Note to Self:  Life will continue to happen to all of us for sure, but how we choose to show up is key to what kind of results we can expect to have.

Tags: loss, parent, Drive, Home, car <BR/>