My advice? Answer the door. I am reminded of this old joke:
It rained for days and days and there was a terrific flood. The water rose so high that one man was forced to climb on top of his roof and sat in the rain. As the waters came up higher a man in a rowboat came up to the house and told him to get in. “No thank you, the Lord will save me!” he said, and the man in the rowboat rowed away.
The waters rose to the edge of the roof and still the man sat on the roof until another rowboat came by and another man told him to get in. “No thank you, the Lord will save me!” he said again, and the man rowed away.
The waters covered the house and the man was forced to sit on his chimney as the rain poured down and a helicopter came by and another man urged him to get in or he’ll drown. “No thank you,” the man said again, “The Lord will save me!”
After much begging and pleading the man in the helicopter gave up and flew away. The waters rose above the chimney and the man drowned and went to heaven where he met God.
“Lord, I don’t understand,” he told Him, frustrated, “The waters rose higher and higher and I waited hours for you to save me but you didn’t! Why?”
The Lord just shook his head and said, “What are you talking about? I sent two boats and a helicopter?!”
Recently my partner and I were given what seemed like bad news. I won’t go into the details because we are still knee deep in it, but we didn’t want to accept what we were hearing. We began to fight tooth and nail until we received more bad news. We continued to fight and then received even more bad news. Fighting back wasn’t working. For some reason I began to think about my experience competing in collegiate Judo tournaments.
To be successful in Judo one needs to master the ability of using your opponents strength and power against him. If your attacker pushes you, you can step aside and use his momentum to throw him forward. The word Judo means “The way of gentleness”. Too often I find myself in attack mode. Hit me, I hit back. Sometimes it might make sense to absorb the punch and envision the outcome you desire. I thought to myself that maybe there was a way to get what we needed without fighting.
A sort of peace came over us and we realized that maybe someone was sending a message and that we didn’t need to fight anymore. Maybe there was a bigger plan, a different plan for us. We opened our eyes and began to see what seemed like a negative might really be a positive in the long run. Perhaps it would allow us to grow our business faster, removing some of the barriers that we didn’t realize were holding us back.
