My brother-in-law’s chain broke during our mountain bike ride yesterday morning. It happened at the far end of a 5 1/2 mile trail and we unfortunately did not have a spare master link with us, so he had to hoof it up the hills and coast down.
Rather than curse his misfortune, he took the opportunity to focus on energy management, which transformed this potentially negative experience into an almost entirely positive one. Hills provide momentum, through the opportunity to trade altitude for speed. So do little bumps, tree roots, dips and more, though not in exactly the same way. If you give a little downward push or thrust as you go down the back side of said bump, root, dip and so on, you can add a significant amount of velocity to the system.
There are latent advantages all around us. Those who recognize those advantages and exploit them, by looking with uncommon vision and not getting caught up in negative emotions that blind them to those advantages, gain momentum when others slow to a halt. They see that something beyond when others see inescapable limitation.
The same principle is widely used in aerobatic flying. Altitude is traded for speed and vice versa, and well-coordinated tradeoffs result in an efficient performance (as little strain on the engine) as possible. The greatest technicians of the air share many secrets with the masters of the mountain bike world, though the principles are applied slightly differently.
What goes up must surely come down, but what comes down can go faster in the process. That speed, properly managed offers a number of advantages, including but not limited to greater stability as well as the chance to trade speed for other things that might be useful in the attainment of your goals.
Whether you’re rolling down a steep slope, gliding down a steep path or coming off of a figurative high, you can put the speed you gain (if you’re not habitually riding the brakes and if you keep your wits about you) to good advantage.
Give it a try! What do you have to lose?
Gregory Hake 
It becomes obvious that as one is keeping their integrity serendipity happens.
Seemingly bad luck is viewed as an opportunity for magic to happen.
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What a great attitude and you really don’t have anything to lose!
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Good example of using whatever comes our way to advantage. I realized some of the best instruction I received was when things seemed to not, in the moment, be going as I planned or would have preferred. That’s why judgement tends to cut off productive evolution; it’s like riding the brakes!
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I can see this principle applied in a number of ways whenever you work at some perceived disadvantage; it opens you up to be very resourceful with everything you have around you and see things where otherwise you would have looked over them. It’s like what you hear of people inheriting a large fortune – they end up spending it all rather frivolously because they didn’t learn the valuable lessons that come from actually having earned it. You really are at a disadvantage in yourself when you have too much advantage becoming complacent or comfortable rather than having the wherewithal/knowledge/skills to using an advantage to gain an even greater advantage. That comes from good old-fashioned work.
Kudos to your brother in law for taking the high road and not wasting that opportunity!
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There is never any benefit from feeling discouraged, and especially not from letting that feeling have any input on your actions. Just look at the makeup of the word: “dis-courage”. It is actually a more palatable way to describe the fear of failure.
No one wants to admit they were afraid to fail, but saying “Oh, this bad thing happened and I got discouraged, that’s why I did’t get out of bed today” seems more temporary, like it’s a natural part of life and it will go away as fast as it came. Yet that removes any responsibility from the part of the discouraged-feeling person.
Sometimes feelings come to us that we might not like and might not have a choice about, but it is always our choice to either accept or reject those feeling through our actions.
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