Zen and the Art of "It's All Good"

Business lessons in adversity. Yesterday was a day that should have driven me up the wall:

And yet, somehow, I found the Zen of it all, and stayed remarkably calm while my life appeared to be falling apart. A few years ago, I don’t think I could have handled that so smoothly. The loss of the photos alone (including our whole trip to Mexico) would have made me insane.

I thought about the time a few years ago when i was driving a rental car in San Francisco, didn’t have the mirror adjusted properly, and accidentally cut off another driver. With true California class, he leaned out his window and called out, “It’s all good!” I apologized and explained that because it was an unfamiliar car, I had misaligned the mirror, and he was cool with it.

But I’ve often reflected on that. And on the way my friend and mentor Bob Burg is able to deflect conflict, defuse angry people, and accomplish his agenda. He has a newsletter and book called Winning Without Intimidation. I finally got to meet Bob last week when he came to this area for a speech; we’ve been friends online for maybe eight years, and I include a section on him in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Applying it to the day I had yesterday, I won’t try to analyze how I stayed so calm. But I will try to draw some business lessons from it.

First of all, back up your files offsite. Duh! I’ll be exploring the best places to do this.

Second, showing anger in public is always counterproductive, no matter how “right” you think you are. I have to go re-read that chapter I wrote about Bob Burg. I played a part in turning that list discussion ugly, and I regret it. And I’ll have to deal with the consequences. I will of course try to do better next time.

And third, be patient because you don’t now what the world has in store for you. If I’m feeling frustrated because the editor isn’t returning my call, or because the Business Ethics Pledge is not getting signatures as quickly as I’d like, or because the six-legged critters are apparently out to get me, I just have to remember the guy in California. “It’s all good,” even if I don’t know exactly how, yet.