Events and Trends and Roaches

Colorful text: Events and Trends.
08/25/2025 |

Do you tend to overreact when faced with a new dilemma or issue? I did—until I really understood the difference between a trend and an event.

I touched on events and trends in chapter one of How to NOT Lose Friends and Fight with Other People. Here’s another perspective:

Shocking Morning Issue

Picture this. It’s early morning. The sun is just starting to light the sky. Wearing your soft slippers, you walk into your dark kitchen, flip on the light, and a roach scrambles toward your cabinets. But before he can escape, you stomp on him!

You’ve lived there for 2 years and have never seen a roach in your kitchen before. After disinfecting your slipper and wiping the floor, what do you do?

Do you call out the local Pest Control Company and sign a contract for $59 per month for the next year?

You could…but would that be smart?

NO!!! It was an event! As disgusting as it was, it was just one roach one time in 2 years!

But if the next morning you find another roach, what do you do? Is it an event that is morphing into a trend? You don’t know yet. Maybe you buy some insect spray or roach traps to use by your kitchen cabinets, right?

Then you find a roach in your bathroom. You swat at it and it flies into your bedding. Oh my God, it flies!

When you take your contaminated bedding to the laundry, you find another roach. It is not an event. It’s a trend. And it’s getting worse- a worsening trend.

Take Action!

You need to take serious action, or this trend could get out of control!

The point is- when something happens, don’t go overboard with your response. Don’t overreact. Match your reaction to the seriousness of the situation. Was it only an event, never to reoccur? Or could it develop into a trend?

Not all trends are negative. It might even be a trend worth building on, like you run an ad that gets great results again and again. It’s a trend—a great trend! Run that ad! But this is a topic for another article.

Evaluate. Keep those eyes of yours open! And…just in case- don’t walk barefoot into your dark kitchen!