Your car breaks down the morning of your most important meeting for work.

You spill coffee all over the paper you stayed up the entire night working on.

Your best friend rips the brand new, expensive jeans you got for your birthday.

You lose a loved one to an incurable disease they’ve been battling for months.

What all these situations have in common is their solution: adapt and overcome.

A wise history teacher of mine was very much into Japanese culture, and always preached the rules of the bushido, the samurai code. In his classroom, he had a simple, typed piece of paper on the wall with one pillar of the bushido: adapt and overcome. During the many difficulties that I have encountered thus far on my journey, I have found no words more compelling, more uplifting, or truer, than these.

To understand the weight of these words, it is first necessary to dissect exactly what they mean. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Adapt: to change your behavior so that it is easier to live in a particular place or situation

Overcome: to successfully deal with or gain control of (something difficult)

Okay, so now what? It can’t be that simple to get over some of the worst situations life can throw at you. To truly “adapt and overcome” you must first accept the truth: sh*t happens. Life happens, not always in the way you wanted or planned. So, since we cannot control what happens in life, we must do our absolute best to control how we react to it.

Wouldn’t we all love to just give up and call in sick when the car breaks down?

Or, cry to the professor with some fake excuse to get an extension?

What about alienating your friend until she feels horrible or buys you a new pair?

And, you could just curse the world that life is out to get you.

Or,

You could ask your neighbor for a ride to work and call your boss on the way to explain

You could tell the professor the truth and accept the lower grade or perhaps their mercy

You could forgive your friend because friendship is worth more than any piece of clothing

You could mourn your loved one but accept that sometimes the journeys of our loved ones end much before we’d like.

None of this is easy. In fact, they all involve a lot of dried tears, swallowed pride and deep breaths. But, in reality, what else are you going to do? We aren’t always dealt the best hand, but we can learn how to play the cards right. Even when life really isn’t fair, put on your poker face and get in the game.

The boy you like doesn’t text you back, you tear your ACL in the opening game, Donald Trump becomes president. What are you going to do?

Adapt and overcome.