Yin vs YangThe Battle for Success in Life

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Article by Peter J. Normandia. Follow me on Twitter.

The last few weeks have been a bit tough for me. Although it has been quite exciting building my business, and seeing projects coming to fruition, the problem has been in making enough steady money to live comfortably.  The future actually looks bright. It’s just, in the present, it’s still raining. I’m sure every entrepreneur knows the feeling. The money you make goes right back into the business as you keep on molding it to perfection, time and time again.

Yesterday, it just seemed like from the minute I got up, to the minute I went to sleep, the bad news just kept on rolling in. To sum it up briefly, there were credit card problems, client issues, a sick family cat that is not looking good, and my wife quit her job. You could say it was quite a whirlwind day.

In the middle of this nightmare, I went to my partner’s house to work on further branding our business, and finally put up our own website instead of everyone else’s. While he was going through the process, my head was spinning with all sorts of nonsense. I had too many things to worry about. The pressure felt overwhelming. What was I going to do? 

“PETE!”

….my partner yelled. He could tell I was on another planet. I fessed up and tried selling him on my problems, but he wouldn’t bite. Then he said something that took a little while to sink in, but eventually eased my mind. It was one of those things that is so obvious you almost don’t pay attention to the legitimacy of it.

He said, ‘What is worrying going to do about it?’

That had always been my motto on life. When I was sick, I did not worry about getting better. I just focused on getting through each day. The same goes for now. Things are rough out there, and starting a business in these times is very challenging. It is even more challenging when you need to sustain a certain level of living that your family is used to.

However, worrying about things is only wasting time.

In fact, I’ll take it further and say that worrying is actually a cop out to dealing with the problem. Instead of taking proactive steps to sturdy my situation, and fight through the rough spots, I was feeling sorry for myself. I was worrying about what I was going to do instead of actually doing something.

It’s like a fighter standing in the ring worried about getting knocked out. If you are thinking about it, chances are, it will happen. You don’t worry about getting hit when you fight. You expect it. You just focus on your game and trying to set the pace no matter what they throw at you.

If you are worried, you are not focused, and that means you will most likely fail.

I think this is a common trap many entrepreneurs fall into while trying to get their business off the ground. We get tied down with deciding each day whether or not we are going to make it. We worry about the outcome instead of dealing with the now. In the end, though, the ‘now’ is all we can control. We may be able to come up with all sorts of possible outcomes in our head, but none of them matter. The only thing that matters is what you do TODAY.

We must learn to stop worrying about whether or not it’s going to work out. As my partner said, have faith in yourself. It is going to work. It’s just a matter of taking care of the now. After this pep talk, we got down to branding Reimagine, and it went rather well. Instead of wasting time worrying about my situation, we spent it on making my situation easier for the future. I just have to remember that it all happens just one step at a time. Nobody leaps the staircase to success in a single bound. Not even Superman.

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