What Does Business Teach You About Life?

Very few people get into business as a way of learning – it would, after all, be a very expensive form of schooling and one which wasn’t guaranteed to have the impact you’d signed up for. However, if you run a business for long enough, you’ll find that you learn stuff pretty quickly – whether or not you actually wanted to. More than this, you’ll find that what you learn is not limited to business lessons. 

Stay in business for long enough, and you’ll also learn a lot of lessons that are applicable in your life beyond business. Again, these lessons will come whether or not you invited them or even appreciated them at the time. But it’s undeniable that you’ll pick up a lot of information that you will benefit from in the long term – and the examples below are some of the most prominent.

Focus on the goal, not on the obstacles

In business and in life, we all have priorities, and will work to achieve those. Sometimes, reaching our goal can be hard, and it’s at times like that we are prone to be distracted by other matters. There is something known as an “opportunity cost” – and it can arise when we focus on something peripheral to the detriment of our true priority. Be aware that there will be obstacles along the way, and be ready to overcome them in pursuit of what you are looking to achieve.

Generosity is its own reward

Doing right by other people is something that people often have to be cajoled into. When you have to be cajoled into something, you’ll rarely absorb the lessons and the benefits of it in the same way as when you make a point of it. When you set out in business to put the customer first, and to make your workers feel valued, then it repays itself in ways you could never have predicted. As the likes of Jorge Hank have discovered, people are loyal to those who look out for them. That’s invaluable in life and in business.

You can’t resist change, only adapt to it

Depending on what age you are, the changes you have seen just in your own lifetime so far may well be more than you expected would happen across your whole life. The truth of the matter is that change is constant, even if it feels like we’ve seen more of it than usual in recent years. In business, these changes may not be ones you’re always comfortable with, but there is no point trying to resist – change is a force. All you can do is react to it in your own way, and the same is true of wider life. We live in a more open society, and while you don’t have to like that, you do have to consider how you engage with it.

Because there is only one of you, it is easy to go through life thinking of things in a simple, personal way. But the moment your future happiness depends on understanding things on another level – such as in business – the lessons will come thick and fast. It’s a good idea to learn them.