Lessons Part 3: Wile E. Coyote

I bet this one comes a a surprise to you.  Maybe it's because I already got you used to comic book characters in my previous posts.  Believe it or not I learned some very valuable lessons from Wile E. Coyote.  If you're unfamiliar with the character (How IS life under that rock by the way?), he's consumed by one goal: to capture and devour the Road Runner.  It's a task that he hilariously fails at repeatedly.  If he ever DID catch Road Runner it wouldn't make for much entertainment now would it.  Anyway, let me get to the point.

1.  The best laid plans don't always work

Wile E. Coyote is a genius.  Granted a super genius.  His plans are thorough, precise and inexplicably well funded (Thanks ACME!).  He only continues to fail at his goal because the universe is set in favor against him. For me though, Wile E. Coyote as a tiny bit of a role model.  See I too am a pretty good planner and I too have watched many a great plan crumble in failure.  That's sort of the way life just works.  We can plan things to a T but then life happens and stomps on your plans the way Rick James would grind his dirty boots into your couch.  You'd think that Wile E. Coyote would be the poster boy for giving up though but....

2. NEVER give up.

He doesn't.  Ever.  When his plan fails and gets shot to hell, he goes back to the drawing board and makes a new plan.  We all know he's going to fail, but he just picks him self right back up and tries again.  You're gonna hate me for this, but I always rooted for Wile E.  In a fair world he would have caught a Road Runner every episode.  The world though is far from fair, but that doesn't mean we should just pack it in and give up.  In fact there's really only one reason (besides the whole being the bad guy thing) that Wile E. never accomplishes his goal.

3.  Keep cool

This is where Wile E. sets himself up for the final failure.  He goes a little nuts, gets a tad obsessive and then pulls out ALL THE STOPS.  So he had a few setbacks.  By the third try or so though he gets a little desperate and goes into overkill mode.  I mean he pulls out plans designed to turn his potential meal into a grease spot.  Had he continued on a sane track, who knows; he might had hit that one plan that works.  The moral of the story: keep cool.  When you lose your cool, things easily go from bad to worse.