A podcast predicated on the journey of business and life.
Problems are a sign of change.
Problems show us where things are broken.
If we own and deal with problems correctly it will lead to greatness.
Episode Transcript
Hey what’s up? What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome to THE a.m. Welcome to 5 Minute Rants guys. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. Welcome to the show where we talk about anything and everything predicated on the journey of life and business.
Guys, today I want to talk about one of our most favorite subjects as people, problems. When I say that, the first thing that comes to mind is ugh… problems. Problems at work, problems at home. We’re not normally excited about this word, we don’t get excited about this word. As a matter of fact, we actually have negative thoughts, feelings and emotions about this word. And ironically enough, I actually think that’s the problem around problems (laughter). Well, I think I’m funny, you may not have laughed, but I think I’m funny.
So let me go back to this, I actually think that the way that we deal with problems can either lead us down into the path of greatness and success, or it can lead us down into this chain reaction of the hellhole swirl, okay. And it first starts with how you see it. Instead of seeing problems as a burden, or a nuisance, or a pain point, you must really see them as an opportunity. And really to see them as something that is helpful. Problems, when they show up they’re really road signs to teach us and help us learn that things are broken in this area of my life, whether it’s at work, home, wherever it is. It’s a road sign trying to show me where things are broken.
And me, as a person, our human nature, we want to run away from problems versus let me run towards it and look at it. I’m not saying fix it, just look at it and examine it. Because problems are really honestly a sign that change is coming down the road. And it’s going to happen regardless of what you want to do. Because whatever was being done, the system that you’re operating in, the work you’re doing at work, whatever you’re doing, it’s broken now. And so change is going to happen. And how you view it, how you choose to look at it, and how you choose to respond are going to determine the course of life for where this problem is going to take you.
Right. So for instance, you and I all have to get up and go to work, we all have to get up and go to work. And if you’re in Atlanta, you are most likely a commuter. And I’m down in good old Georgia in the south in hot ATL. And there is traffic. And I used to and I’ll even go back to my college days, I used to valet, and I would drive from the suburbs into the city to valet at night. And I normally had to go in at rush hour traffic. And one of the things that I started doing was I started really listening to audiobooks and educating myself on the way down to work. And instead of looking at traffic being like, “oh, this sucks, this is horrible. I hate sitting in it for an hour and a half.” And all these other things. It’s like no, I can actually use it to better my life. I got to drive down there anyways. So I need to use it to better my life, the same thing, having that perspective.
And I don’t know why I did that. It probably had something to do with my parents raising me to look at things differently. I’ll give them credit for that. But it’s that perspective is really how we have to see problems. Like cool, you have to get up and go to work. Okay, so how do you make work less miserable. And I’m not saying you need to stay at a miserable job, you should really move forward into what you love doing. Sometimes that’s not always possible. You have to have a stepping stone sometimes to get where you’re going. But if you got to do those stepping stones, how are you going to confront the problems? And how are you going to view the problems and then how are you going to enact change for your betterment and everybody else’s?
And I’m not just talking about a fix. So for instance, me my business partner we talk about all the time, we are not firefighters, we are fire preventers. We want to get rid of all the fire hazards. So there are no fires. But the only reason why we want to do that is because guess what, we had fires we had problems. And so the way to look at everything is really to come back and to see everything that it’s really a blessing.
Everything doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. And that mentality. That mindset is so important when looking at problems whether in house at home, whether in relationships, whether at work wherever you are depending on how you look at it is going to change everything. And so for good or for bad for worse or for better. It is all up to you which goes into ownership. And I’m out of time so we’re not going to talk about ownership, but we need to.
Alright guys, I’ll catch y’all later. Catch you on the flip side peace.