Cote placed this line as the capstone of his section on getting out of your comfort zone, and it served as a kind of thesis statement for his entire career philosophy. The logic was disarmingly simple: since life is going to happen regardless, passivity has no upside. You're going to experience change, challenge, and surprise whether you seek them out or not — so you might as well be an active participant. The statement carried particular weight given Cote's own story. His life had 'happened to him' in ways he never planned — failing at manual labor, almost joining the Navy, fishing commercially, getting married young — but at each juncture, he chose to influence the outcome rather than drift. That choice eventually took him from being an hourly factory worker hoping to make $20,000 a year to becoming the CEO of a $37 billion global company. For UNH graduates in 2011, entering a job market still recovering from the Great Recession, the message was both realistic and empowering. Cote wasn't promising that everything would work out — he was promising that trying to influence the outcome was always better than not trying.