Did you get stuck in a bad situation?
Two words get you ready and
four secret words get you out again…
In a Crisis… Say: Yeah Baby!
by Peter Bruinsma
Say Yeah Baby? What’s this guy advocating? To celebrate your depression?
It did get pretty bad once when I quit my job right in the middle of success. Then one day I took a can of paint and I waived my deposit and sprayed on the chalk-white wall of my rental apartment DO NOTHING in red pizza-sized letters.
It was when James Altucher said, do nothing, that I thought, familiar!
Analysis is paralysis and guilt forcing you to do something you can’t do anyway just sets you up for crashing into that wall again. Better just wait.
Painting on the pristine wall that day was a Yeah Baby moment. Now I could start doing nothing without guilt. The next day I bought a sofa, one with real feathers called the Easy Living, so I could sit while I was doing nothing.
I say, try having a Yeah Baby moment when you know things have hit bottom. And then wait.
But I didn’t come today to talk about the life-is-falling-apart kind of crisis.
The Do Nothing trick works with any size crisis, especially small ones. Just say Yeah Baby! Then do nothing, take a beer with it and watch until a solution appears.
Now before you get all optimistic and head out to the liquor store, let me nuance this a bit. Only a responsible person should drink in a crisis.
It was a sunny day in 1999 when I was living in Amsterdam when I was still rich and throwing money at loose ends and waxing my surfboard for what would become the dotcom wave. During rush-hour on my way home from work I was making the daily ostentatious head-turning entry into a busy street with my ’69 Chrysler 300 ,top down. That’s what famous people feel like, I thought. Though the novelty of that feeling was gone after the first tank.
I loved that car. I am tall and I could stretch my legs. And size matters, especially in an accident. The dashboard was my favorite with its full-width bookshelf. It had all my important stuff on it. My banana Nokia 8110 with WAP. How To Solve It by Polya. And tapes with this kind of music that would put me right next to Telly Savalas in a Kojak episode.
It had an annoying glitch where once a month the engine and all the electrics would suddenly die right in the middle of driving. It could be in a tunnel, anywhere usually, and best on a sunny day when I didn’t want to take the company-car to the client. But fixing it seemed like more hassle than the problems it caused. It simply had personality and once in a while it was moody.
Only idiots would drive a car like that in Amsterdam, also because the streets are so narrow since they were made for horses. And parking is something to put on your list of long-term goals.
I would have no choice but to double-park. I’d leave the Nokia on the shelf when the top was down, as an experiment to see if the bad-assness of it and of the car itself were an effective theft deterrent. Sometimes I left the keys in and the wallet too and nothing ever happened, in the middle of Amsterdam. Have faith people!
The inspiration came from seeing Japanese mafia guys that time when I went to see about a girl in Tokyo named Shannon before she changed it to something else. The Yakuza would simply stop their Mercedes right in the middle of Shibuya Crossing with the doors open and the engine running while they went about their official business in some establishment. As soon as you saw their tattoos you’d know that that Mercedes was perfectly fine just where it was.
So that day I’m jammed in traffic. It’s going nowhere and then Gary Glitter, The Glitch, kills my car: “Hello, I’m back again. Have you missed me?” I’m suddenly the jam that makes the whole street grind to a halt.
SHIT!
From experience I know exactly what to do. Nothing. Anything else would be stressful and confrontational. You can’t solve problems like that.
There are only four words to remember when you’re in this kind of shit. I learned them from The Greatest Salesman in the World, a tip from Salone who was one step up from me in the Term Life Insurance Ponzi scheme that I ended up in for a few weeks in my college days, until I decided that I was never going to be any good at compounding anything except problems.
Those four words are all I remember and they saved me many times, like the one time I was in New York to catch a train to North Dakota to go on a canoe trip in Ontario with Freckles who I met on ICQ. First I had to meet an old friend in Manhattan who would lend me his couch but I couldn’t find his phone number so I told the airport taxi to take me to the Hilton. I wasn’t really going to stay there. They were just going to hold on to my bags while I went about my business. I finally found his phone number and called him in the comfort of the lobby. He said meet me at this place later. So I walk around the town while Paris Hilton is watching my bags. He described where the club was but I couldn’t remember the name. I cruised around in a cab and several hours and $200 later I thought I found it and they even let me in. After about 15 minutes I realized it’s an all Asian club and I thought, no problem, I’ve been to Asia. But my friend was from Malawi and it was pitch dark and he could be anywhere.
There was one more place to check, so I walk straight into the VIP room and I swear it was these same Yakuza guys. I’m a white guy in 3/4 khakis stirring a stick in a Soju Bomber and I’m surrounded by tattoos who have their Mercedes idling outside.
What do I do? Nothing. Ostentatiously. Instead of a quick exit and spilling my cocktail over the guy’s ink, I just stand there, and to show that I came with purpose I turn my face into a Kojak moment: Yeah Baby! Then I search every corner. Miko could be in here!
All the while I repeatedly repeat my four words and fortunately everything turns out OK after I fake a casual exit that affirms I was not there by mistake.
Although I was half a dozen blocks off looking for my sofa connection, I manage to wake up on it the next morning but I’ll spare you the rest. (Ok, I kept calling him from a payphone until he got home and then I got his address.)
You probably wonder what those four magic words are that always get me out of trouble. And you probably wonder why I didn’t go back and check in. Me too! It would have been a lot cheaper and they had my bags!
Anyway, the four words are This too shall pass. Corny eh? You should try them some time!
So with the car immobilized, I said This too shall pass, and visualized tomorrow and saw myself driving to the beach.
Instantly, after I did nothing I solved the entire gridlock crisis! All that remained was details and things would be OK. They had to because I already felt the sand between my toes.
But this time there was a unique opportunity. Like a skilled pilot always on the lookout for a good place to crash I spot a sidewalk café only meters away. And it’s happy hour no less!
I got out and I brought Polya to spend the time and the Nokia because it was part of the solution with roadside assistance ready on quick dial.
I knew I had maybe an hour before they’d show up and I got a cloudy ice-cold Wiekse Witte with a slice of lemon and a coaster for writing down startup ideas like the face book. Then I sat down to get a good view to enjoy the situation from a carefree perspective. I turned a crisis into entertainment and all I had to do was nothing, and wait.
- In a small crisis, say Yeah Baby! It could be spice of your life.
- In a large crisis, find the bottom and do nothing. Then slowly crawl out.
- (And in a medium-to-large crisis, when your baby is being born on the sidewalk, you fix it, idiot!)
Share this ancient secret of the four words with your friends! ❤
To deal with any tiny mini crisis you want to read Fuzzball.
