How a Growth Mindset Beats Murphy’s Law
We’ve all heard of Murphy’s Law.
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
Most of the time, we say it with a laugh. But if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve probably had a season where it felt less like a joke and more like reality.
Maybe your car broke down the same week an appliance quit working. Maybe work became stressful while something unexpected happened at home. Maybe it wasn’t one big problem. Maybe it was ten small ones that all showed up at the same time.
I’ve had one of those seasons.
My brother and I joked that Murphy must have gotten my new address after we bought our farm.
The truth is, buying the farm has been one of the greatest blessings of our lives. I’d do it all over again. But nobody tells you everything that comes with twenty-two acres. Grass keeps growing. Trees fall. Equipment breaks. There is always another project waiting.
That’s just part of the responsibility.
Then life decided to add a little more.
Within a couple of months, I lost my job. Our fifteen-year-old cat, Boozie, passed away. Not long afterward, our rabbit, Bugsy, died too. One vehicle started throwing warning lights. Then the other one joined in. My tractor stopped working. My Kawasaki Mule still wasn’t running. My zero-turn mower broke. The electricity in my barn stopped working. Our upstairs air conditioner stopped cooling, and I found out the home warranty I had purchased didn’t cover nearly as much as I thought it would. Then a toilet supply line started leaking. On top of all that, it felt like the list of chores around the house and farm was growing faster than I could cross anything off.
None of those things, by themselves, were impossible to deal with.
Together, they were exhausting.
I think that’s something we don’t talk about enough.
There is a difference between being hopeless and being exhausted.
Exhaustion has a way of making every problem feel bigger than it really is. It steals your perspective. It convinces you that because several things are going wrong today, everything must be falling apart.
I’ve learned that’s simply not true.
One moment from this past year keeps coming back to me.
My family was on vacation in Florida, about seven hundred miles from home, when the check engine light came on.
My first thought was probably the same as anyone else’s.
“Seriously? Right now?”
For a few minutes my mind started racing. Was the vacation over? Were we going to be stranded? How expensive was this going to be?
Then I caught myself.
I realized I didn’t actually know what the problem was.
I only knew there was a warning light.
So instead of assuming the worst, I slowed down and gathered more information. Once I understood what we were dealing with, everything changed.
The car wasn’t magically fixed.
The warning light didn’t disappear.
But the uncertainty did.
We finished our vacation, drove home without any issues, and later had the vehicle repaired under warranty.
Looking back, I don’t think that experience was really about a check engine light.
It reminded me that uncertainty often creates more stress than the problem itself.
Sometimes our imagination writes a story before the facts have a chance to.
That doesn’t mean every situation has a happy ending.
Sometimes the diagnosis really is bad.
Sometimes life is unfair.
Sometimes you lose someone you love.
Sometimes you lose a job you weren’t expecting to lose.
A growth mindset isn’t pretending those things don’t hurt.
Carol Dweck writes that people with a growth mindset don’t ignore challenges. They approach them differently. Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” they begin asking, “What can I learn?” or “What’s the next step?”
That idea has stayed with me for years.
I’ve found that most problems don’t get solved all at once.
They get solved one decision at a time.
One phone call.
One repair.
One application.
One conversation.
One day.
When I look back over this season, I don’t remember one heroic moment that changed everything.
I remember a lot of ordinary moments where I simply decided to keep moving forward.
Some days that meant applying for another job.
Some days it meant fixing something around the farm.
Some days it meant spending time with my wife and daughters and remembering what mattered most.
Some days it simply meant getting out of bed and choosing not to let a difficult day become a defeated life.
That’s what overcoming Murphy has come to mean for me.
Not avoiding problems.
Not pretending everything happens for a reason.
Not believing life will suddenly become easy.
It means believing that today’s circumstances don’t get to decide tomorrow’s story.
Murphy is going to show up from time to time.
That’s part of life.
The question isn’t whether he knocks on the door.
The question is what we’ll do when he does.
I’ve learned that I can’t control every problem that comes my way.
I can control how I respond.
I can slow down.
I can gather information.
I can ask for help.
I can take the next step.
And then the one after that.
If you’re in one of those seasons right now, where it feels like life just keeps piling on and you can barely catch your breath, I hope you remember this.
You can get through it.
You don’t have to solve everything today.
Just take the next step.
Then take another tomorrow.
Tomorrow probably won’t be perfect either. But it might be a little better than today. Sometimes that’s enough.
Murphy may visit all of us from time to time.
He doesn’t get to write the ending.