I know it’s been a while since my last rookie blog post but we’ve been so busy here at Storage Solutions preparing for the New Year and it’s great! So to close out 2011 I wanted to blog about one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced over the past few months: how to effectively manage adversity. (Curveballs, if you will)

Imagine you’re a rookie baseball player making his first start in the big leagues. And on top of that, the opposing pitcher in your first game happens to be Cy Young winner and Detroit Tigers Pitcher Justin Verlander. Now, Up until this point in your career you’ve never seen anything like him. His 99mph fastballs look like they’re coming at your head around 200mph and just when you think you have his fastball timed right, he freezes you with a knee buckling curveball. Strike 3 and you’re heading back to the minor leagues. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic but you get the point.  As a rookie, slight adversity looks like it’s coming at you much faster than it really is and just when you think you have it, something new pops up.

The obvious goal is to pay attention to detail so that problems don’t occur but as everyone knows things don’t always go as planned and the only way to improve at handling these curveballs is experience. The more issues you see and the more problems you have to fix the better you become at handling adversity when it jumps up and slaps you in the face. You start to see things in slow motion. Things start to slow down and those 200 mph fastballs start to look like beer league softball lobs.  Before you know it, you’ve been called back to the big leagues, you’re batting .335 and you’re the new World Series MVP! (If you can’t tell I really enjoy imagining myself as a professional baseball player. But again, the point is clear.)

Here’s an example of a valuable lesson I learned a few weeks ago… When shipping a package internationally, you may run in to challenges that appear to be out of your control. The only real solution to a problem like this is to keep pushing and keep trying something else. I call one number and the person can’t help me, I keep pushing but still get nothing. Hang up, call someone else. They can’t help me either but they may know someone who can. On hold, on hold, cheesy jazz music, still holding. Eventually I get through to someone that can help and get the problem resolved. It wasn’t easy, actually pretty frustrating. But I finally got to the end goal of getting the problem resolved and the only reason I got there was because I kept calm and kept pushing. Just like practice for that minor league baseball player!

In closing to this blog, on behalf of myself and the Storage Solutions Family, I’d like to wish a late Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you and all of yours! Make sure to look for Storage Solutions in 2012!