There is a story in the Bible that I love. Even secular readers are probably familiar with at least part of it. Jonah gets an assignment he doesn’t particularly want, runs in the opposite direction, ends up in a storm, gets thrown overboard, and is swallowed by a great fish. But hear me out. Let’s talk about the worm.
By Chapter 4, Jonah has survived the fish, made it to Nineveh, and completed the assignment he tried so hard to avoid. He is sitting outside the city when God provides a plant that grows over him and gives him some much-needed shade. Jonah is very happy about this plant. Then God provides a worm. The worm attacks the plant, the plant withers, the sun comes up, and Jonah is furious.
Jonah’s reaction, in my opinion, lands somewhere between a teenager and a toddler. He is mad. Over a plant. But God uses that little worm, and Jonah’s reaction to it, to make a much bigger point about perspective, compassion, and what really matters. (Jonah 4:6-11)
I don’t know what kind of worm Jonah was dealing with, but consider the ordinary earthworm for a moment. These little creatures spend their lives underground, yet their activity helps create channels for air and water and contributes to healthier soil. Small creature, important job. If God could give a worm an assignment, surely I shouldn’t be so quick to decide that I have nothing left to contribute. And neither should you.
Because there are days when I feel like I cannot give one more thing to the business, to the employees I am supposed to lead, to my family, my responsibilities, or the people who need something from me. There are days when, honestly, I picture myself walking away from all of it. Not dramatically. Just that fantasy of: What if I simply didn’t have to deal with any of this today?
If you own or manage a moving company, perhaps you know the feeling. A truck goes down. A customer is unhappy. Someone calls out. A claim lands on your desk. A job you thought was profitable suddenly isn’t. The phone is ringing while you’re trying to solve the problem created by the last phone call. Then you go home, where apparently there are people who also expect things from you. Rude.
I have to remind myself that whatever I am experiencing at that moment is not the whole picture. My frustration may be real, but it is also momentary. And there are certainly worse things in this world than being in my shoes.
I recently finished Daniel Chidiac’s Stop Letting Everything Affect You: How to Break Free from Overthinking, Emotional Chaos, and Self-Sabotage. One section discusses psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema’s research on rumination, basically getting stuck repeatedly thinking about distress, its causes, and its consequences without actually moving toward a solution. Her research found that rumination can feed depression and anxiety rather than resolve the problem in front of us.
This one hit home. I have a great memory. Ask my husband. He will tell you I remember things too well. But remembering everything is not always useful. Neither is replaying a conversation 14 different ways, imagining what someone meant, revisiting a decision that has already been made, or forecasting every possible disaster that could come next. At some point, more thinking isn’t helping me. Acting is.
That is especially relevant in our business because we are problem solvers by necessity. Moving rarely goes exactly according to plan. Elevators break. Trucks break. Weather changes. Customers add items. Access isn’t what we were told it would be. Someone measured something incorrectly. Someone forgot to tell someone something. We adjust.
Maybe resilience isn’t pretending those things don’t bother us. Maybe it’s recognizing when thinking about the problem has stopped being productive and asking three questions: What do I actually know? What am I assuming? What can I do next?
Sometimes that next step is surprisingly small. Make the call. Send the email. Look at the numbers. Ask another mover how they handled it. Apologize. Follow up. Go home. Get some sleep and look at it again tomorrow. And sometimes the answer really is: nothing today.
As we move into fall and toward the holidays, the pressures change. Peak moving season may be behind many of us, but business doesn’t stop. We are budgeting and planning for another year, looking at equipment and staffing, renewing insurance, making decisions about our companies, and trying to figure out what the next season will bring.
At the same time, the holidays bring their own demands: family, travel, traditions, people we love, people we miss, and sometimes people we love whom we would prefer to enjoy in smaller doses.
So perhaps this is a good season to step outside the problem for a moment. What is stressing you right now that might look different if you viewed it as an observer instead of the protagonist? And if life and business happen to be giving you a restful season, what are you doing with it? Are you preparing your business, your people, and yourself for the next round?
Jonah couldn’t see much beyond his dead plant. I understand him more than I’d like to admit. But the plant wasn’t the whole story. Neither was the storm or the fish, and neither is whatever happened at work today.
Sometimes we need to deal with the problem in front of us. Sometimes we need to change our perspective. And sometimes we just need to stop thinking long enough to take the next useful step. After all, even the worm had a job to do.