Just by it’s very definition, you can’t prepare for the unexpected. If you can prepare for it, it’s not unexpected!
You can however, EXPECT the unexpected.
Since you know it’s going to happen, be ready to adapt. Be ready to change paths. Be ready to power through it if need be.
The average person freaks out or freezes when the easy button is taken from them.
But we know it’s coming. It’s just a question of where and when.
And most often, that is where the real opportunity comes from. The unexpected.
If things were easy and went according to plan, everyone would do it. Plans are easy to make.
Like Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” “Everybody has a plan until they get hit. Then, like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze.”
One way or another, adversity will find you. It’s how you react to that adversity that defines your outcome, not the adversity itself.
Tyson was asked about that quote twenty years after he said it. He says that’s what life is like. “It’s all about endurance. You might be one of those guys that starts real fast, but at the end of the game you’re not looking so good. Or you might start a little slow, have some adversity in your past, but you stuck it out and now you’re on top of the mountain for a long time. Some guys start off looking real good, but they can’t maintain that.”
The unexpected will find you on your path to the top of the mountain. How you handle it will decide the view you end up with. A view of the world from the peak? Or from the ditch at the side of the road wondering what if?
