Amid Unusual and Extraordinary Difficulties
by Kalika Yap
Marcus Aurelius ruled Rome for nineteen years, and almost none of them were calm.
A plague came home with the army in 165 or 166 and stayed for years. His co-emperor and adopted brother, Lucius Verus, died in 169. Wars on the northern border ran for most of the rest of his life. One of his most trusted generals rose up against him. Several of his children died young. And the whole time, his own health kept failing.
None of it waited its turn. It all came at once, and it kept coming.
And the sentence written about him afterward is the one I want you to hold this week:
“He did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign. But for my part, I admire him all the more for this very reason, that amid unusual and extraordinary difficulties he both survived himself and preserved the empire.”
The words belong to the historian Cassius Dio, who wrote them in the generation after Marcus died.
Read the last line one more time. Slowly.
Survived himself. Preserved the empire.
Two jobs. In that order.
If you’ve been in business long enough, you know that stretch. The one where you stop asking “what’s next” and start asking “what else.”
The Years When Everything Hit at Once
I started Citrus Studios in 1999. So the dot-com crash happened on my watch. So did 2008. So did 2020.
In 2008, the financial crisis hit. And I was in the thick of the sweetest, hardest stretch of my life.
I had a baby girl at home, still nursing, and I’d just found out her little sister was on the way.
At the same time, I was in the middle of the patent fights over Luxe Link, the purse hook I invented. Those didn’t wait for a calm quarter at the agency. They arrived when they arrived.
And I was launching another company, The Waxing Co in Honolulu. Which meant flying back and forth between Los Angeles and Hawaii, pregnant, with a baby in tow, to open a business in the middle of a recession.
So picture it. Still nursing. Pregnant again. Running Citrus. Defending a patent. Launching a company across the Pacific. And the economy failing all around me.
Nobody scheduled those to arrive one at a time.
What I learned in those years is that the difficulties don’t come one at a time so you can handle them in order. A client leaves the same week a key person gives notice, the same month the economy turns.
And the thing nobody tells you is that in a stretch like that, your business can survive while you don’t. I’ve watched it happen to founders I love. The company makes it. The person running it comes out hollow.
That one sentence about Marcus is the reminder that both jobs matter. Survive yourself. Preserve the business. And the order is on purpose.
The Trap I See With Almost Every Client
When the hard things pile up, most of us do the same thing. We start treating the pile as a verdict.
Three problems at once must mean I’m bad at this. Four must mean I picked the wrong business. Five must mean I should’ve seen it coming.
Notice what the sentence about Marcus does instead. It doesn’t call him unlucky because he was weak. It calls the difficulties unusual and extraordinary, and admires the man more because of them.
A pile of problems is a description of the stretch you’re in. Keep your own name out of it.
The second trap is right behind it. We try to preserve the empire by spending ourselves. We stop sleeping. We drop the practices that keep us steady. We cancel the walk, the meditation, the dinner, the doctor’s appointment, because “there’s no time right now.”
Marcus was fighting a war on the Danube and still wrote in his journal at night. Two of the books in Meditations are headed with where he was when he wrote them, in camp among the Quadi and at Carnuntum. He didn’t wait for peace to take care of his own mind.
The Client Who Is Still Fired Up
One of my youngest coaching clients gave birth, and a few days later she had a stroke. Then heart surgery.
A new baby. A new business. And her own body, all at once, asking more of her than anyone should have to give.
I saw her recently. She is still fired up. Still building. Still talking about the business like it’s the best thing she’s ever done.
What impressed me most was the calm energy she brings to everything. No frantic edge. No apology for where she is. Just steady.
And her nails were done. When I said something about it, she laughed and told me she still makes time for herself. With a three-month-old at home.
That’s what surviving yourself first looks like in real life. A stroke, a surgery, a newborn, a business, and she is still on the list of people she takes care of.
When I asked her what keeps her going, her answer was simple. Her business has a purpose. The end goal is a house, and a life where she can provide for her child.
That purpose is what carried her through the hardest part. It gave her a reason to rest, to heal, to accept help, and then to get back up.
When the pile gets tall, purpose is what tells you which job comes first. And she is proof that job one can be done with calm.
Two Jobs, In Order
Here’s the reframe I want you to take with you this week.
You have two jobs in a hard stretch. Survive yourself. Preserve the business. Most of us only remember the second one.
“Survived himself” comes first in that sentence, and I think that’s right.
The founder who is sleeping, thinking clearly, and still in her body makes better decisions about the business than the one running on fumes. The empire gets preserved by a person who is still standing.
My client knows that. Marcus knew it. So when the pile gets tall, say this to yourself. Two jobs. Me first, then the business. In that order.
That’s the strategy.
Your Step-by-Step Guide: Get Through the Pile This Week
Step 1. Write the whole pile down
Take ten minutes and list every hard thing you’re carrying right now. Business and personal. Big and small. One line each.
Then, at the top of the page, write the label Marcus earned: unusual and extraordinary difficulties.
You’re naming the stretch. You’re refusing to name yourself.
A pile you can see is a pile you can work. A pile in your head just gets heavier.
Step 2. Survive yourself first
Pick the one practice that keeps you steady and put it back on the calendar for this week. Sleep. A walk. Your meditation. A workout. A real lunch.
For me it’s my daily Vedic meditation. Twenty minutes, no matter what the inbox says.
Marcus wrote in a war camp. You can take twenty minutes in a hard week.
Job one is you, because the business needs a leader who’s still standing.
Step 3. Sell the palace furniture
When the wars drained the treasury, the record says Marcus refused to invent a new tax. Instead, he put the palace heirlooms and his wife’s ornaments up for sale in the Forum and let anyone who wanted them buy them.
He gave up the beautiful things to keep the thing that mattered. The empire stayed whole.
Your version: look at your list and ask what you’d let go of this quarter to protect the core. The nice-to-have software. The second office. The project that’s prestige and no profit.
Decide what’s furniture and what’s foundation. Then sell the furniture without shame.
Step 4. Ask for help like a soldier
Marcus wrote this to himself: “Be not ashamed to be helped; for it is thy business to do thy duty like a soldier in the assault on a town.”
He was the most powerful man in the world and he still had to remind himself that taking help wasn’t weakness.
Write down the three people you could call this week. A mentor, a peer, a coach, your spouse, your bookkeeper. Then call the first one.
The wall is easier with a hand up, and the soldier who refuses one doesn’t get over the wall.
Step 5. Take the wrestler’s stance, then one action in 48 hours
Marcus also wrote that the art of life is more like a wrestler’s than a dancer’s, because it has to “stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.”
A dancer plans every step. A wrestler stays balanced and responds.
So in the next 48 hours, take the single smallest action on the top item of your pile. Send the email. Make the call. Cancel the thing. Book the appointment. Then reset your stance for whatever comes next.
You don’t have to solve the pile this week. You have to stay standing and move one thing.
Want Someone in Your Corner for This Stretch?
Some hard stretches you can get through alone. And in some, one steady outside voice is the difference between surviving yourself and just surviving.
That’s most of what I do with my coaching clients. We look at the pile together, and we work out which job comes first.
No pitch. Just a real conversation about what you’re carrying right now.
You’re allowed to be in a hard stretch and still be good at this. You’re doing just great.
DOWNLOADABLE WORKSHEET
Get Through The Pile
When everything feels like it’s hitting at once, this 20-minute worksheet helps you get the pile out of your head and onto paper. Identify what’s weighing on you, protect the practices that keep you steady, decide what you can let go of, ask for help, and choose one action to take in the next 48 hours.
