132. Nothing is good or bad

Dear Erik,

Whether colleagues talk back to you and tell you what’s on their mind is influenced largely by the culture you are working in and by your own attitude towards them and your acceptance of feedback. My colleagues in Romania, for example, do not like to tell me what they consider to be ‘bad’ news. If there are things they think I might not like or even be angry about, they avoid the subject. I never take my colleagues to task about errors. I never ‘punish’ somebody for a mistake, but rather I see them as an opportunity to learn from. However, discussing an error is already seen by some colleagues as a kind of punishment. They hide and forget rather than to do something constructive about it. A mistake is not bad. It is very valuable if you can learn from it.

Our family life can definitely affect our work, whether we are an entrepreneur or an employee. If you have a lot of problems at home, you often take them with you to work. The problems remain in the same head, right? We are not robots and it’s not easy to just switch into a new mood at work. And the reverse is true. If you bring a lot of positive energy from your work to home, it has an effect on your family if you come in whistling.

When things go badly at work you don’t want this having an impact on your family situation and vice versa. I can’t entirely separate one from the other, but I do the best I can to ensure that they don’t interfere. If it goes badly at work, I am unaffected by it (and also when I get home).

How I do this is very simple, but not easy. It took a lot of mental training. And now I will share something with you that perhaps you will not understand conceptually. I expect you will not be able to adopt it as your own, as you have your own beliefs and I think you will fight against this.

In my life there is hardly anything good or bad. Because I am not able to judge something as good or bad. Is rain good or bad weather? Is dry hot weather good or bad? Was the crisis in 2009 good or bad? Is arguing with your wife good or bad? Is a huge increase in sales good or bad? Linda, my spiritual coach, shared the following story:

‘Once there was a strong horse in the field of a farmer and his neighbor said he was lucky. The farmer shrugged and said nothing. The next day the son of the farmer fell from the horse and broke his leg. The neighbor expressed his compassion and said the farmer was unlucky now his son could not work. The farmer shrugged and said nothing. The next day all the boys were drafted into the army, but not the son of the farmer. The neighbor said the farmer was lucky’.

Can weather be good or bad? Of course not. Weather is weather and does what it always does. It just is. Was the crisis in 2009 good or bad? We have since quadrupled our productivity. Is arguing with your wife good or bad? Probably much needed and unavoidable. Is a huge increase in sales good or bad? Some companies go bankrupt, others become stronger.

If you manage to live without good or bad judgements on what happens in your life, a world of opportunity opens up. It will feel like a tremendous liberation because you will not be limited by the many psychological limits good and bad judgements impose on you. As Johan Cruijff said: ‘every disadvantage has its advantage’.

Sincerely,

Gerard