Why Won’t You Stop Crashing Into the Window?

Why stubborn persistence isn’t always the way to go when you encounter a challenge.

One day when we were all still working face-to-face, I stepped into a coworker’s office to ask her something. There was a loud and distinct thump. We both turned towards the noise just in time to see a bird fly right into the window.

We watched in growing horror as the bird would crash into the window, fly backwards, hover for a minute, then rush forward and crash into it again. And again. And again.

“How many times is he going to do that?” my coworker wondered. At least twenty, as it turned out. No exaggeration.

“Wow, he’s really got some persistence,” I said. “But how do we get him to try something else before he hurts himself?”

We decided to pound on the window and see if startling him would snap him out of his obsession. It worked, and the little guy flew off to find a different path.

While I initially admired the little bird’s persistence, later I realized he was making the same mistake many of us make: he committed to a path and kept on with it despite all evidence showing it was the wrong way to go.

Instead of learning from his mistakes, he kept making the same exact mistake over and over again.

How many times do we stay in a job, or in a relationship, or pursue a goal with stubborn determination long after it’s clear to everyone around us that it’s the wrong way to go? How many times do we ignore that voice in our heads that tells us that we need to do something different?

Sometimes it’s about ego. We’re embarrassed that we are on the wrong path or in the wrong relationship and everyone realized it before us.

Let’s face it: we all hate to be wrong. It’s hard to have to go back to the people who told you years ago that your boyfriend was a jerk and admit they were right, but it took us longer to get there.

Or we tell ourselves, well I have already invested so much time into this goal/idea/relationship, it has to pay off eventually otherwise all this effort was wasted.

You’ve likely heard that Thomas Edison failed 1,000 when inventing the lightbulb but he also kept trying a new design. Imagine if he was like, “I’m just going to keep on re-doing this same prototype because I’ve already invested so much in it, maybe it will work this time.”

Sometimes we feel like we are expected to remain committed to someone or something, and people will judge us if we don’t. This can happen especially when you have to make the hard decision to cut yourself off from members of your family.

Sometimes it may be because while we’re in this “definition of insanity” loop, at least it’s comfortable.

We know the good and the bad, and trying something new….a new job, a new apartment, a new relationship, can seem overwhelming.

And maybe sometimes we just have some dogged optimism that we’re right. Look at how many people get into pointless argument on social media, because they’re sure they convince someone that they’re wrong.

It’s a good thing to persevere and keep trying. People have achieved great things when no one thought they could, and all signs indicated that they would fail. We all love those underdog stories about how someone walked into tryouts and landed an NFL gig or was rejected by fifty publishers before someone took a chance and published their soon-to-be-a-bestseller book.

And then again, there was that episode of Friends where Monica’s boyfriend decided he could be a UFC fighting champion, despite his lack of athleticism, and was continually beat up without ever improving.

“Stay committed to your decisions but stay flexible in your approach.” — Tony Robbins

The question is, how do you know if you’re on the right path or not?

Take a lesson from the little bird: regroup between failures, consider your approach, and if someone is pounding on the window giving you a warning, at least listen to the warning and give it some consideration.

You may choose to continue flying into the window, but at least do it knowing that you have all the information.