Tough Times Do Not Last

We live in a complicated world.  We have spent the past six decades trying to mold systems of protection, systems of efficiency, systems of respect, systems of increased knowledge, systems of improved spirituality, systems of improved health, systems of increased financial growth, systems of added pleasure, systems of increased family understanding, systems of social equality and systems of improvement for anything you can virtually think can happen.  Each one of these vast efforts requires learning knew things.  It also requires the adoption of practicing different ways for living.  As each individual learns how to carve their way down the paths that prove important to their own ideals and dreams they discover how many new complicated lines of discipline are added to the motions in their lives.  The world then grows much more demanding with too much to do and very little time to do what we feel we need to be doing.  It begins to look very complicated.

In the business world, this is especially true.  As each competitor adds a new wrinkle for attracting more consumers and revenue growth so goes the comfortable world of staying the same in our own endeavors.  When the competitor adds new services, we must follow suit if we plan to attract the consumers who moved to those new services.  Each time this kind of addition occurs our business model must get in line also.  If we fail to recognize the value in this kind of management we fail to address how to keep revenue growth moving towards the plus side of the ledger.  To ignore these rules of business engagement is to ignore one of our most important responsibilities of trade.  Our volume might suffer without practicing this duty.  Business life can become very complicated at times.

As life spins out all of its increasing demands for rules, regulations, adherence to social pressures and our natural desires to improve what we do the simple things that once were required to maintain a successful business life now become extremely complicated to find their way to success.  The level of things that are now required to make profitable business moves occur are found on a list more than a mile long!  The list is longer than we had ever imagined.  The world of managing business affairs has become a seriously complicated matter.  This is true for those who want to, at minimum, stay the same.  Let alone, grow!

This kind of demand placed upon the things we must learn to do adds pressure to the life of a business leader.  More demanding tasks come to the daily table than ever before.  What was once a casual load of required duties and a small respect for elective ideas have grown up to become demanding activities for providing the minimums that a simple business requires in its pursuit of success.  The risk factors that parallel business life have grown off the charts.  The work loads have consumed the owners time.  Business responsibilities have become an all consuming piece of that persons life.  Survival seems always to flirt with failure.  Tough times lurk around every new corner.  No business model can easily escape this complicated mess.  We all face these requirements.

Even so, some will fail.  Even so, some will win.  Those who win will gloat comfortably about making it well.  Those who lose will hide that fact as best as they can.  Welcome to the complexities of human nature.

So what happens to those who get swallowed up by the complicated winds that this world has brought about us?  What happens to those who lose big?  What happens to the ones in business that find their debt too large to manage?  Where do these failing business models go?  Better yet, what happens to their leaders?  How do these leaders deal with the reality of losing big?

Page two.

I once read a very good book.  It was titled, "Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do."  It was written by Robert Schuller.  Most of us have heard this phrase and understand its message.  It is the phrase in many popular lyrics.  It was featured in a Gregory Peck movie.  Regardless of how many times we see this phrase we pass it by like a common word.  The fact still remains, it is true.  Tough people will survive the messy stuff that takes down their lives.  Tough stuff happens to everyone of us.  It comes into our lives and destroys where we think we ought to be.  Tough times can land well.  All of us knows this truth.

Even though we accept this truth we can also recognize how those tough times become temporary in nature.  Eventually those tough times go away.  The strong effects of tough times eventually become a little thing that fades away as the past moves further back in time.  New stuff takes over and our lives move on to other things.  This is always true.  Tough times never last.  Remember this fact when you are wrestling with some very tough things in your life right now.  Tough times never last.  They eventually work their way out of dominating our current thoughts and energies.  They become less of an influence in the decisions we eventually make.  They pass.

For those who are trying to manage the losing battle of a lost business model, keep up your spirit.  These tough times will pass.  Better days are in your future.  Even though they are not visible today they are coming later.  Try to recognize this truth.  It will help you manage how your mind deals with what has gone wrong.  The mind is a very difficult thing to manage when the world has placed so many demands on how to do the right things well.  No business owner misunderstands this position.  The winners and the losers all know exactly what all of this means.  The ones who are winning right now were the ones who were losing some time ago.  The ones who are losing right now may have been the ones who were winning a while back.  This is how slippery success can become.  It is a complicated matter.  Tough times do not last.  They are just ugly to manage when they arrive.

Keep the faith and do the next right things.  Start working through the tough times with clean thinking.  Stay focused on doing the right things as each challenge lands on your ugly porch.  Every piece of ugly result will challenge your mind to do the right thing.  Do the right thing anyway.  Stay focused on beating the odds that most fail to respect.  Do the next right thing.  Stay on task with doing what needs to be done next.  It will hurt deeply to manage your way out in this fashion.  Do it this way, anyway.  This kind of approach will shorten the duration of time the junk remains.  It will help to bring better results back to the front.  Tough times will end sooner.  These are all good things to have occur while the world is falling apart.  Uncomplicate matters, do the next right thing.

Above all, remember this truth.  Tough times do not last.  They never do.

Until next time...