Zero to Startup: Day 16: The World is not Against You
Sh*t happens, how will you handle it?
Bad things will happen in the life of a startup founder, things that make you want to try to point fingers and question what you’ve done to make things go wrong. In reality, however, sometimes that’s just the nature of the world.
Recently, I had a series of unfortunate events occur. While in the grand scheme of life, it probably isn’t the most devastating of events, but nonetheless, the situation made me question whether there was something I could have done differently to have a positive outcome.
Naturally, I fell into “the-world-is-against-me” mindset, blaming everything that happened on things that I had no control over. When everything seemed to be going wrong in a single moment, I had begun to point fingers and tell myself that the series of bad events that was unfolding in front of me was simply out of my control and that I was just an unlucky person.
As a precaution to avoiding situations like these, I try to mentally divide situations and aspects in life into two quadrants: the ones I can control, and the ones I cannot. In doing this, I am able to mentally understand if a bad or good situation was in my control or out of my control, and thus act accordingly.
After much consideration and thought, I had understood that the series of unfortunate events was out of my control, and I was right about that. However, I was wrong to have told myself that “the world is against me”.
In times like this, I think back to the Biblical story of Job: a man who was always faithful to God, yet unfortunate events always seemed to happen to him. In the story, he is consistently tempted to break his faith with God, but even in the times of trouble, maintains his faith and thus at the end of the story, is rewarded for his troubles.
Whether you are religious or not, I believe the moral of this story is a powerful one, and one I think society seems to forget: bad things will happen to you in your life and you may never know why, but if you remain faithful to what is good in society, then things will eventually work out for you.
The same goes for entering the startup world. Nothing works out at smoothly as successful founders seem to portray. Things will inevitably go wrong, leaving you scratching your head wondering if there was anything you could have done differently in the moment to avoid the circus of misfortune. If you ask any founder, I will almost guarantee you that there came a moment in their journey where they had found themself in a situation like this.
The true test of character, in my opinion, is how you react to this moment. Will you raise a finger and point it at someone? Will you play the blame game? Will you say the world is out to get you? Will you say you have the “unlucky gene”?
Or… will you simply be aware of this moment and tell yourself “you know what, today was not the best, but that’s okay” and continue moving forward? There are 365 days a year, and if every one of those goes swimmingly, I’d say you’re doing something wrong. You can’t have good without having the bad, and you know what, as long as you continue looking forward, take the hit and get back up, those good days will come.
So don’t hang your head and think the world is against you, because it’s not. Take the hit, understand if it was in your control, and if it was, learn from it so something like that doesn’t happen again. And if it wasn’t in your control, tell yourself that bad things happen to good people all of the time, and today was your day to clock in, and just keep moving forward.