“When I was a very young actor, there was an improvised scene between a husband and wife going on inside. They got carried away and they started throwing things and he threw a chair and it lodged in the doorway and I went to open the door and I just got my head round and I said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t get in.’
He said, “What do you mean?”
“It’s a chair there.”
He said to me, “Use the difficulty.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “Well, if it’s a comedy, fall over it. If it’s a drama, pick it up and smash it. Use the difficulty.”

Now I took that into my own life. You ask my children directly, anything bad happens, they go, “You’ve got to use the difficulty. How can we work? What can we get out of this?”

Use the difficulty. There’s never anything so bad that you cannot use that difficulty. If you can use it a quarter of 1% to your advantage, you are ahead. You didn’t let it get you down. That’s my philosophy. Use the difficulty.

Also, added philosophy is avoid them if you can.

– Michael Caine