Why do some people prefer to drive rather than fly? Statistically, flying is safer by several orders of magnitude — the fatality rate for commercial airline crashes is one in 11 million, versus one in 5,000 for car travelers. And yet, I know a number of people who will not fly. Maybe they had a bad turbulence experience once that scared them, or maybe the thought of being in the passenger seat, unable to take action if anything goes wrong, is viscerally frightening.
But, they think, if I’m driving I’m in control, so I’m going to drive seven hours to get from Nashville to Charlotte, North Carolina, instead of hopping on a one-hour flight. People make drives like that because they think the drive will be safer. It is not safer, of course, but because they are in control, they feel safer. They drink coffee to stay awake, and they do their best to avoid the wackos on the road — but statistically, that’s a very poor decision. And it’s a decision some people make because of that false sense of control.
I think human beings have a tendency to make themselves feel safe by compulsively overcontrolling their environments. But doing so gives a false sense of security because you can’t control every variable — you can’t even predict what variables might introduce themselves.
If you don’t waste time fighting what you can’t control, your blood pressure stays a lot lower. Accept and embrace the obstacles you face, and then do what you can to address and mitigate them. You have to say to yourself, Okay, this is the reality: my wife is going toleave me, and my kid wants to disown me; or my best friend just slept with my fiancé, and I’m
about to lose my job; or I was just diagnosed with a serious medical condition. All of these things are just part of the human condition — and if you live long enough, some of them will happen to you.
Accepting and embracing a situation doesn’t mean being happy about your misfortune or not being frustrated; it just means being pragmatic, and saying, Thishappened, and there has to be a reason why. It’s part of the universe’s plan. It’s just the waylife is sometimes. I need to embrace this reality and go forward with a plan to address thissituation.
I’ll give you an example from my own life. One of our current clients is a tech company. We’re working on the marketing strategy for their AI, and it’s largely exhilarating yet at times can be frustrating. This client is understandably highly alert to their competitors’ every move, and that’s making it challenging for us to market their premium structure — i.e., what you have to pay a subscription fee for versus what they offer for free. Because the competitive landscape keeps shifting, they keep having to reassess their strategy.
This periodic strategy reassessment can sometimes cause our work to have to suddenly pause mid-stream. We have six people dedicated to this client, and then suddenly they are “pencils down.” That means six high-priced professionals aren’t fully utilized for a week or more and we, of course, have to pay them until the client gives the go-ahead to restart the work.
It’s certainly frustrating, but there’s nothing we can do. Our client has to operate this way in such a fast-moving, competitive environment. We could resign from this client. We could tell them we can’t operate this way. We could leave them and try to work for one of their competitors in the hope that these stops and starts wouldn’t happen. But the competitors would almost certainly not be better, and very likely be worse. And there are a
hundred agencies who would be thrilled to go to work for our current client and accept whatever terms they offer.
I know the reality is that we are very fortunate to have such a prestigious client operating at the leading edge of technology. Yes, the dynamic of this business can lead to more volatility in our financial results. But I don’t panic. I don’t lose sleep over it. I truly don’t.
I would lose sleep if we’d screwed up in some way — say, if we’d paid some high-priced people and they did lousy work, or if I found that we weren’t attentive enough to the client’s needs. But I could control that. I could exit those people from the company.
But that isn’t the case. We haven’t screwed up and we’ve earned a demanding client’s trust over multiple years. The client operates in an intensely competitive environment. We can’t change this. And they always treat us with respect, thank us when we perform well, pay us fairly, and pay us on time.
These are the hallmarks of a great client to have.
It’s tempting to catastrophize when you’re faced with a difficult problem. That was me for part of my life. And part of me — the child part of me — still does that. That urge used to dominate my thinking. It doesn’t anymore.
There’s a certain serenity in just accepting what is and embracing the path forward based on your reality.
Written By Don Kurz
Don Kurz is an entrepreneur, former championship lacrosse player, and dance instructor who regularly danced the Hustle at Studio 54. He has been a senior partner in a major international consulting firm, successfully taken a company public on Nasdaq, started a hedge fund, and currently is the executive board chair and principal shareholder of leading creative agency Omelet LLC. His new book, Do the Hustle – Life Lessons from Studio 54, the Championship Lacrosse Field, and the Boardroom, is both an amusing and serious collection of lessons learned, taught to readers through his dynamic life story. Learn more at DonKurzAuthor.com.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Our Editorial Team are writers and experts in their field. Their views and opinions may not always be the views of Wellbeing Magazine. If you are under the direction of medical supervision please speak to your doctor or therapist before following the advice and recommendations in these articles.
