Long ago, in a Zen monastery, a distraught monk approached his priest. "Oh wise master," said the monk, "I am a failure. I have meditated and meditated, but cannot achieve enlightenment." His master smiled reassuringly and said, "This will pass." One year later, the same monk bound joyfully into his master's chambers. He said, "Oh wise master, I have done it! I have achieved enlightenment!" His master smiled reassuringly and said, "This will pass."

The master's philosophy certainly applies to business. Today's headache often leads to tomorrow's brainstorm, but whenever we think we've finally nailed it and business can go nowhere but up, new challenges appear. The Zen master, like the vigilant entrepreneur, accepts the inevitability - and unpredictability - of change. Hold that thought.

An associate of mine steadfastly refused to start his own business for many years, claiming he didn't have the stomach for it. He was wise to recognize the central role of one's stomach in business. He finally became an entrepreneur when he realized that he didn't necessarily need a strong stomach, but one with a clear voice.

As I explain to students, if your brain falls in love with someone but your heart does not, you get a stomachache. If your heart falls in love but your brain does not, you get a stomachache. Your stomach is the center of wisdom; balancing the arrogance of your head and heart, so listen to your stomach!

Trusting your stomach is not a matter of shooting from the hip and acting on intuition; rather it is the policy of drawing on your experience and inviting intuition to the conference table.  If you've done the math and a deal still feels wrong, you owe it to yourself to find out why.

Experience doesn't just improve one's skills; it educates the gut, refines the radar. However, a rumbling stomach is no excuse for paralysis. An entrepreneur must learn to act in spite of ambiguity. You'll make good decisions and you'll make bad decisions, and you'll make good decisions that go bad. But as Winston Churchill said, "If you're going through Hell, keep going." I'm not saying that any action is better than no action, but I am saying that inaction should be a conscious choice, not a result of indecision or analysis paralysis.

Accepting the inevitability of change frees your stomach to worry about other things. To succeed in business, we must learn how to go to sleep with unresolved issues, because as Gilda Radner's Roseanne Rosanadana used to say, "It's always something."