By Katie Hornstrom

Sometimes revelations can happen at the most unexpected times in life.  Last night, I was eating dinner at my sister’s house and it started raining.  Normally, no big deal for most folks.  My sister, however, lives in the country.  On a good day, it usually takes me a solid 45 minutes to get home, in the daylight.  So imagine driving home at 9 p.m. on dark, winding country roads with deer around every curve…  in the pouring rain. 

I made an unhappy face at the prospect and my sister said, forcefully, “Hey!  Don’t ever curse the rain!”

As I was driving to work this morning, running late and again in the rain, I reminded myself not to curse the rain in south Texas, especially not while we’re in a drought.  Suddenly, I was struck by how much the rain was like my job in Communications and like the PR profession in general. 

Often in PR, we spend a lot of time preparing and waiting for events to happen, both good and potentially bad, and they often seem to hit at the most inopportune times.  Haven’t you ever found yourself thinking, “If I only had another (insert here: month, week, day, hour, minute) to get ready.” Or “If only that (insert here: event, incident, accident, situation) hadn’t happened today of all days.”

Like the rain, every situation has a positive and a negative side.  It’s often up to us, and the work we do, to determine which side people see.  As PR professionals, rather than cursing the randomness of life that always seems to happen when you just need one more minute, it’s our responsibility to turn thatevent or incident into a positive. 

Let’s face it, at the end of the day you can’t change the rain any more than you can change the timing of a challenge, but you can control how you react to the situation.  A wise man (thank you Dave Force) once told me that you can control only four things in life:

1.            What you say

2.            What you don’t say

3.            What you do

4.            What you don’t do

Think about the untimely situations in you own career and how you as a PR professional have handled them.  Next time a situation comes up, try to remember that while you may not be able to change the timing, you can usually affect the outcome. And, as I was so forcefully reminded, always remember: “Don’t curse the rain!”