If business as usual is impossible for you – because something has happened or gone wrong – then this is the perfect time to ask yourself what business better looks like. To do this, you have to do what you can and deal with the limitations that exist.
Suppose you can no longer deliver your product or service. Or your business partner runs off with your money. Or you become chronically ill or disabled. You lose a leg in an accident.
In life everything is possible
The golden rule is that you have to do what you can and deal with the limitations that exist. It is a compact manual that will serve you well for the rest of your life. You're welcome.
I didn't come up with it myself. It was Epictetus, a Roman philosopher, who first came up with it seriously. Epictetus is an interesting case in himself. He was a philosopher and a stoic and a teacher and a slave for half his life. After his release, his status went from nobody to pretty much the most important man of his time. That can happen in one lifetime.
Epictetus believed that all external events are determined by fate. Fate, or to put it another way: forces that we have no influence on. Perhaps as a collective, but not as an individual.
Because you have no influence on them, you must accept external events calmly and soberly. Resistance is useless. That does not mean that you should become passive, because your actions and deeds matter more.
Epictetus built a Chinese wall between what is in our power and what we cannot change. The trick is to be able to see the difference and to act accordingly. The energy that is preserved because you do not resist your setback, you must use to deal with it as best as possible.
It also applies to happy events. Did you close the last quarter fantastically, with good figures and money in the bank? Stay sober, no streamers and confetti, no champagne fountains. Accept that it is so.
Do what you have to do and what is in your power
What Epictetus also said – he couldn’t write so a student did it for him – was that every event has to be seen in a broader perspective. You are a tiny part of the imperfect organization called the earth.
Astronaut Andre Kuipers once put it in an interview: “During my first space flight in the ISS I looked at India and thought: there live a billion people who all think the earth is infinite. But in an hour and a half I will see India again.”
In that imperfect organization called Earth, your fantastic quarterly figures don’t mean anything. Did you lose a leg in an accident? In the imperfect organization called Earth, no higher power will raise an eyebrow. This is about life and death on a cosmological level. Not about some insignificant being losing a leg. So don’t wish the accident had never happened, but accept it and move on.
People without legs live everywhere and that's okay
The realization that you are just part of that imperfect organization called the earth, takes you out of the self-focus. Putting yourself in the shoes of fellow human beings in India who are experiencing the same as you makes you less egocentric. After all, India is less than an hour and a half away from here.
When you take the focus off yourself, you achieve acceptance. That acceptance allows you to better map out your unique situation and to accept the unacceptable. So that you can do what is in your power.
And that brings you to better business.
Hans Ruinemans, boardroom monk