I recently watched an interview with Sir Michael Caine where he talked about one of his philosophies of life, which he called “use the difficulty”.
“Use the difficulty” originated from when he was still a young actor rehearsing for a stage play.
In this particular scene, Sir Michael Caine was waiting behind the stage, waiting for his cue to enter the stage, while two other actors were acting out an improvised scene between a husband and a wife. Both actors got carried away during the improvised scene and started throwing things around the stage, including the man who threw a chair that blocked the door through which Michael Caine was supposed to enter the stage.
In that moment he just took his head through the door and went ”I’m sorry sir, I can’t get in”.
To which the other actor replied, “What do you mean?”
“Well there’s a chair in the way, sir” Michael Caine replied.
To which the older and more experienced actor simply replied, “Use the difficulty. If it’s a comedy, fall over the chair, if it’s a drama pick it up and smash it”. He said it in such a nonchalant and simple way, solely focused on acting on stage, sort of like an off-the-cuff comment, but Michael Caine found this such an inspiring and insightful response he took and applied it to his personal life.
So now whenever something bad happens in his life, he immediately goes “How can I work with this, what can I get out of this, and how can I use this to my advantage?”
Even if you only improve the situation 1% by using something bad that happened to you, you’re still further along than you would’ve been otherwise.
This also nicely reminds me of something I’ve heard the great Matt Furey say, “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer”.
Meaning if something happened to you, use it the best (and maybe the only) way you know, write about it. The least you can do is profit from the otherwise “bad situation”.
This goes for everything.
Whether it’s a divorce, a dead in the family, or even your first 1-star book review.
Use it, write about it, turn it into something positive (or at least ‘less bad’), and get something out of it… which in the case of a 1-star book review can be a whole lot more sale if approached from the correct angle… but more about that in another email.
In the meantime, if you want to improve your writing game, more specifically your daily email writing game (and make it easier for you to use the difficulty) then I highly suggest you check out Email Valhalla and see what it has in store for you.
Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla