You're Going To Be Fine

Generally I despise this kind of hallmark advice.

You know the sort, something that tries to evoke some sort of reaction as if it’s a revolutionary, deity-like discovery of thought, even though is is often closer to day-time television psychology.

But oh well, here it is:

You’re going to be fine.

I find my self compelled to say this, as it’s a big lesson I began to learn after I started my working life and I’m sure there are some people who are in that same position right now.

You’re going to be fine.

Honestly, totally fine. No problems. It’ll work out just dandy.

The ad that came back from the booking agency? Oh well, a mistake was made. So fix it.

Client didn’t catch a spelling error after six proofs, now there’s 25,000 flyers with ‘sperm train’ rather than ‘steam train’? Oh darn! Not your fault entirely, they missed the mistake in their text, not much you can do about that now.

Or maybe it was your fault? If so, own it. Say sorry, take a little verbal abuse, or financial, or physical—should you do work for ninjas, in which case accept the steaming hot dish of ass-whoopery—and accept what has happened. Nothing can be done.

And if you can make a change, if you can fix the problem, if you were only remotely to blame for whatever has gone wrong, jump in the middle of the problem and solve it. It’ll quiet down everyone and people will remember you as reliable, as someone to turn to, as a problem solver in shining armour, should you do it right.

Accept that things will go wrong. When it’s your fault, take the blame, fix it as best you can and apologise. Don’t let it happen again, but don’t beat yourself up over it.

Accept that there are going to be challenges, that you’ll need to do things you’ve never done, learn things you’ve never understood. But you’ll learn them. You’ll work hard at it and, as long as your didn’t promise the insane, you’ll get it done. And if you can’t, hire someone who can and relax.

Work hard, laugh, listen to music and enjoy what you are doing. Hunt for the silver lining.

Because at the end of the day, or week, or month, it’ll be gone. The problem will be a foul tasting memory at worse. At best, you learned something new from it. So why stress? You’ll be fine.