✈️ I Don’t Mind What Happens

A couple of months ago, a friend told me a story about a guru who was giving a talk when he stopped mid-sentence and asked the audience directly, “Do you want to know what my secret is?”

Everyone in the room sat up straight, ready to capture whatever profound wisdom was going to come next.

Now fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was traveling to Boise for the Craft + Commerce conference. My friend Mike Vardy texted the group that was going to be staying at our Airbnb that his flight got delayed, and I replied back:

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Little did I know that about 45 minutes after that, I’d have my own opportunity to exercise patience.

My plane (which was scheduled to land in Boise about 5pm) got diverted when we had to wait out a short storm because the plane didn’t have enough gas. But when we got to Salt Lake City, we ran into the same problem, so we ended up making an emergency landing at a tiny little regional airport in Provo, UT.

(I could tell it was tiny when all the airport workers came out on the runway to take pictures of the Southwest 747 we were on when we landed.)

From there, it was a comedy of errors:

• In Provo, our pilot got off the plane to get paperwork for a flight (that technically didn’t exist) and had trouble getting the flight registered
• While he was in the airport, he crossed the hallway and they wanted him to go back through TSA security (but it was such a small airport there was no one working there 🤦🏼‍♂️)
• By the time he got back on the plane, both pilots had timed out and couldn’t fly the whole way to Boise
• We flew from Provo to Salt Lake City (a 17m flight) and they didn’t have another crew for us

The pilot even mentioned when we landed in Salt Lake City that he’d been flying for almost 40 years and had never seen anything like this.

We did eventually get a new crew, and I did eventually get to Boise. And the whole time, I was thinking about Ernie’s story:

I don’t mind what happens.

Truth be told, I ended up rather enjoying the delay! My friend Shawn was on his way to Boise and we ended up being on the same ill-fated flight, so we got to spend a lot of time catching up 😂

Why do I tell you this story?

Because I believe our attitude can either make things right or make things worse.

Getting upset wouldn’t get me into Boise any faster. And if I had been upset, I would have missed an incredible chance to catch up with a good friend.

This doesn’t just happen when we travel though. We have opportunities to get offended every single day! If you’ve ever time blocked your day, you’ve had to deal with things not going according to plan. And when things don’t go according to plan, you have 2 options:

1. Get upset
2. Roll with the punches (don’t mind what happens)

I can tell you from personal experience that getting upset doesn’t win you back any of the time you lost. The most productive thing you can do is to simply adjust the schedule and move on. If the time you lost was on a creative project, getting upset is even more detrimental since it’s almost impossible to create when you’re angry.

The next time your plans go awry, I encourage you to practice some patience. Don’t mind what happens.

Your productivity, and creativity, depend on it.

— Mike

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about the relationship between productivity and creativity, check out the workshop I’m doing this Thursday with the aforementioned Mike Vardy. There are two webinar times available, and all the details can be found here.