At various points in our lives both personal and professional, it may seem that we are “all at sea”. What I mean by this is that it may seem that we have very little control over what is happening in the environment around us, and the only choice we have is to go along with the flow.
There are good times and bad times, ebbs and flows much like the tides of the ocean. In the end it’s not about how we handle the good times that count, but how we weather the bad ones.
If you are a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you will probably remember the phrase used by Steve Rogers, prior to becoming Captain America. He uttered it when he was taking a beating from a larger opponent, it was after he has just been knocked down again and had picked himself back up. The aggressor said, “just stay down”, to which he replied, “I can do this all day…”
What he meant by that was that it didn’t matter how many times he got knocked down, he would always get back up. Entrepreneurs are similar, it isn’t in us to simply wait for something to happen, instead we need to be out there driving forward, making things happen for us. Being proactive rather than reactive.
In our lives and in our businesses, we may not always get everything we want, exactly when we want it. But everything that happens is for a reason, we just have to open our eyes and minds to the lesson that we’re supposed to learn from it.
There will be times when it seems that everything is going wrong, but that’s not the case, there is a lesson in that time that you’re supposed to learn, and that lesson is going to get you to the next rung on your ladder.
Like the merchant, you may be wet and cold cursing the storm that you’ve found yourself in, but it may be that you need to see what the lightning is going to show you to find your way to the next point.
Every moment is about choices, but they aren’t the ones that you might think. In every case, the choice is – ‘’Am I going to learn from this and move onwards, or am I going to stand still?’’