Everyone knows you can’t control all the variables in life, but you try to anyway. It is human nature to want control and to believe you are the captain of your ship. You are the captain of your ship, but, you cannot control the wind that propels your ship. It is this wind that brings flavor and growth to life.

People often look at failure, which can be painful and embarrassing, as a bad thing. However, it often brings valuable life lessons. People like winners; they like successful people and want to be like them.

For that reason, there are a million self-help books filled with recipes for success. While the principles in the books may be true, they fail to account for the randomness in life.

In his book, Creativity Inc., author Ed Catmull tells the story of losing an entire movie after months of work. During production, someone inadvertently deleted all the files on the server holding the movie.

A full year’s worth of work and millions of dollars disappeared with the touch of a button. One can imagine everyone’s blood pressure going through the roof when the mistake was discovered.

Fortunately, a few months earlier, they’d allowed a chief animator to work from home during an illness. She maintained a working copy of the entire film on her personal computer. Disaster was averted. One completely random act offset by another innocuous, ordinary event. There were profound lessons from each event.

The primary lesson is that randomness happens and you can’t control it. You can prepare for it, but you can never prepare enough. There are millions of variables at play each day in lives. For some, these variables lead to breakthroughs and successes; for others, disappointment and failure result.

Neither outcome is good or bad. That judgment comes from the individuals reaction and the value they place on the event.

We often forget that new life springs from ashes of the old. The trick comes from learning how to deal with the randomness that occurs.

One of the first things to remember is, “stuff happens.” No matter who you are, forces beyond your control will affect you. To deal with it, you must remember to breathe and stay calm. While this is often easier said than done, the adage that calmer heads will prevail is true.

Consider the parable about the person who got bitten by a snake. Once bitten, the individual had a choice to make, either take out anger and frustration on the snake or seek medical attention. It seems like a simple choice.

We have the same choice when randomness strikes. At Pixar when they lost the movie, they didn’t fire the IT department for not having backups in place. They began a process of looking for solutions and discovered the forgotten backup. A crisis was averted and new measures put in place to protect against future issues.

Another thing to remember when dealing with randomness is the problem-solving process. The process is the same regardless of the complexity of the problem. It begins by breaking things down into small chunks, then processing the individual pieces, one by one.

Looking at problems as a whole can become overwhelming and cause paralysis. The key is to observe the resources you have and focus on the process in front of you.

Blaming others and looking backward seldom leads to a solution or success. Accepting randomness with an open mind and seeking understanding allows for progress. Therein lies the real purpose of randomness: the opportunity for growth.

Jeff Hough is a business author, blogger and speaker in Pocatello.