Responding to Inconveniences

Audio By Carbonatix

All of us have had that moment when we head into our driveway or garage and go to start the car. But in response, we hear that weak wuh-wuh-wuh sound that tells us that our battery isn’t strong enough to get the car started. Sometimes it happens because we left a light on or a door open. Sometimes it’s because it’s been too cold or we haven’t started the car in too long. Sometimes it’s just because our battery is too old and it’s officially dead. And I don’t know about you, but my car batteries seem to die at the most inopportune times! 

Depending on how prepared you are, the fix could take anywhere from five minutes to however long it takes to get somebody over to your car to help you. If you have jumper cables and another car in the driveway, it’s a pretty simple task to get the battery started. But if you don’t have both of those things, you’re looking at a more complex fix. You will either be scrambling to find your AAA membership card or you’ll be thinking of anybody you know who isn’t already at work that might be able to run over to help you. 

Whether you’re dealing with a dead car battery or some other difficulty, it can be helpful to remember that life is life. There are always going to be some dead-battery moments. Cars die, roofs leak, health issues arise, accidents happen, and everything from inconveniences to significant tragedies can throw us off course on any given day. 

Weirdly, it can be helpful to remember that these types of moments are going to be coming our way. Expecting them (without spending too much time worrying about things going wrong ahead of time) can be really helpful. Because if we run into some trouble when we expected nothing but perfect days, it can really throw us off. Part of maturing and growing as a person is learning not to let these problems ruin your day or make you think that everything is horrible. 

It’s natural for us to feel good and optimistic when our circumstances are positive and to feel down and pessimistic when our circumstances are negative. But when we allow our circumstances to dictate so much of our mood and our outlook on life, we’re almost guaranteed to be setting ourselves up for a bad time. Because tough and unfortunate things are part of life. The more we can learn to accept that and roll with the ups and downs, the better off we’ll be. 

And this isn’t just so that we can have a more balanced approach to life; this will also bring a lot of stability to our marriages and families. When our loved ones can count on us being resilient rather than mopey in the face of challenges, they will be much quicker to come to us and share their own challenges and frustrations. And they’ll know that we are reliable and dependable, even when things aren’t going exactly according to plan. That is so vital because we all know that life doesn’t always go according to plan! 

When we find an equilibrium and don’t allow the challenges and inconveniences of life to throw us off too much, we’ll be winning more often at home.