I’m not a Buddhist, but I totally get what they mean about impermanence being at the very center of human existence.
Not that I’ve mastered the ability to live with it. Nope. I still spend far too much time, trying to make the moments last longer than they should, trying to relive the past, trying to make the future arrive quicker. I think we all suffer from that.
Then again, Impermanence does have its advantages in business. If you’re having a bad day, hey, at least it’ll soon be over.
And if you’re having a spectacular time of things, hey, at least it won’t last long enough for you to stop learning.
The ups and downs of the business are good training for living in the moment, living in Impermanence.
It teaches you to care a lot more about what you can do today, or meeting this month’s payroll, than say, pining for the old days, when it was just you and your partner in a garage; or happily daydreaming about sitting on your yacht in some amazing future scenario.
It makes you live NOW.
This explains why in some of the best performing companies like Facebook or Google, "Mindfulness" (A secular, scientific version of Buddhism) is such a hot new subject. Happy workers living in the moment are more valuable than miserable workers watching the clock.
I believe these years are the best time ever to go into business. But like the drawing implies, don’t get too attached to them.
Lifted from the excellent http://gapingvoid.com