When Losing In Business Becomes Real, What Next?

Is It Time To Graduate From The School Of Hard Knocks?

The power of positive thinking is a real thing.  It can help generate some of the most amazing results.  I have seen athletes, business leaders and troubled family members rise out of the depths of despair through some very powerful positive thinking.  Those people simply willed their poor conditions into something worthwhile.  We have all seen these examples in our lives.

We have also witnessed troubled people turn their lives around by doing completely different things producing completely different results.  These patterns of life change have examples laying all over the trail of life.  One does not need to look very far to find excellent examples of recovery.  The world is chock full of them.

When a business owner spins out of control and begins to make losing a reality, what happens next?  What happens to those who are completely over-taken by the negative effects of a poorly guided business model?  What becomes of those business leaders?  Where do they turn now?  What do those who realize they are losing big do when that reality truly hits home?  What is next for them?

I work with business leaders who constantly flirt with this reality.  It is not a place for the faint of heart.  Junk happens and it happens deeply.  Working around and through this kind of stuff will wreak havoc on the strongest egos.  The toughest guys will whimper like a new born baby when the reality of losing comes home to settle.  When the notices arrive that take the business away the truth usually sets in.  That is the time when that strong ego gets its last final crush.  The debris of losing begins to fly everywhere.  Nobody is left out when this kind of unraveling begins its course.  Hearts get torn.  Emotions burn out of control.  Depression sets up tent.  Denial and fault shoot off like sparklers flying out of every corner of the business design.  Crap happens everywhere.

What happens when this kind of business experience flips out its ugly fire?  What hose, which flame and what little fire needs to be extinguished first?  What happens next?

How do we repair a broken business model?  How do we repair a broken personal life?  How do we repair the damaged relationships that come with the connections that linked up those lives in that business life and business doings?  Where do we begin?  What is next?

Page two.

Is It Time To Graduate From The School Of Hard Knocks?

When the horse gets out of the barn the search begins.  Even though many advisers passed us by as they suggested that we learn how to keep the field gate closed and locked, we ignored those warnings.  We simply did not take their advice about how we needed to change doing our business the way we were doing it incorrectly.  As business owners, doing some stuff incorrectly, we do not believe we will end up losing it all.  We like our autonomous ways and we love our independence.  That is one of the key reasons why we own our own business.  We want to do it our way.  We simply cannot envision how our horse would run away if the gate remained open for just a moment or two.  We believe we can recover if that horse darted out into the world of fields and began to explore that world beyond the fence of controlled business captivity.  We do not see how that would matter so much.  That is usually why we ignore good advice.  It simply will not happen to us.

Yet when it does, we can list off the million reasons why we could not avoid losing this way.  We can name off the long list of reasons why our business model was doomed from the beginning.  Even when our loss hits home and hits hard, we can find strategic ways to exclude our poor leadership as the cause.  We can legitimize how we are not to blame.  It happens to even the best hearts with the cleanest souls.  We lie and deny.  We deflect our presence away from our fault.  We set blame on the poor conditions we were given to manage.  Our loss is the fault of others, with things that occurred untimely and out of our control.  We can make these kinds of stories stick...and we do.

In our business life of loss we learn to stab what ought not to be stuck.  It becomes a neat way to protect our egos from further damage.  I do it, too.  I cover my tracks with all that I can find.  I sweep my ills right under the rug.  I try to make myself look better than I really am.  I want others to know that it was not my fault.  My loss in business is something that was unavoidable and I want everyone else to see it the way I see it.  This is as common as the earth moves around the sun.  Unfortunately, when a misguided business model finally fails those owners who allowed it to happen describe how the sun moves around the earth.  They simply do not get it.

If your business model is flirting with these truths, get help.  If you keep on doing what you are doing you will keep on getting what you have been getting.  Eventually this kind of wrong getting will run its course and the road of existence will find its end.  It is at that end of the troubled road that every piece of expected good from any relationships that were once developed within this business model will all come to a troubling end that will not be easy to accept or repair.  The next question will arrive...what's next?

Here's my advice.  Make a bucket list.  Get your pen and paper out.  Write them down.  Carry them with you.  The people who right their goals down are the ones most likely to achieve them.  Every single study of that fact continues to prove this theory well.  Write your goals down!  Quit being the stubborn one who falsely believes you are the exception.  You simply are not that great!  Just flush those foolish beliefs.  Write your goals down.  Do it now.  Even if you have already lost your business model.  Write down your next goals.  Make a bucket list.

On that bucket list include two things.  The first thing you need to force yourself to do is to find new friends.  Force yourself to get around others who are more educated, more sound in mind and more experienced at winning in life than you are.  Quit circling others who are below the station of life where you believe you are.  Dial up your friends.  Go hang out with minds that have more to offer.  You do not need to be the leader of your friendship pack.  Following is not a cruel and unjust way to live.  Only your ego will try to convince you it is.  Flush how your ego lives and thinks.  Look at what it has gotten you today!  Our egos circle stinking thinking.  Go stand next to someone smarter than you and soon will will discover what I mean.  It can become one of the most humbling things your ego will ever experience.  Go make this goal happen.

The second thing you need to add to your bucket list is to begin reading good books.  Start putting new and useful quality stuff into your mind.  I cannot speak Chinese because I do not put it into my mind.  I cannot speak Celilo Indian because I do not put it into my mind.  The very same thing holds true with business success.  If it is never placed into the mind, it cannot accidentally ever come out to distribute and play on the field of work.  A winning business model does not happen without first becoming real in the mind of the one who leads the process.  It must first go into the mind before it can be spoken.  Start reading better stuff.  In most cases, some need to start reading in the first place.  Some of you never read.  Shame on you.  Begin the reading habit.  Start with ten minutes every day.  It will seem like an eternity if you do not have the habit of reading.  People, it is only ten minutes.  Get serious about reading good stuff.

Here's the deal.  You lost.  You do not know what you need to do next.  That means you are financially broken, relationship broken, emotionally broken, physically broken, spiritually broken and mentally broken.  What next, right?  Make a bucket list.  Write it down.  Make sure two things are placed on that bucket list.  The first one, describe who your next friends will be.  Make sure they are above your intelligence level.  Go hang out with true winners.  You might catch their disease.  Then secondly, gather some good books to read and begin reading the words those books hide.  Start placing new and better thoughts into your mind of play.  Most of those thoughts will challenge your current beliefs, your current understanding and your current patterns for doing what you feel you ought to be doing.  Guess what, that is exactly what you need right now.  You need new things to start happening right now.  These new and cleaner thoughts will offer more effectiveness to your efforts of repair.  Get closer to those works.  Apply your mind.  Tax it greatly.  Make it hurt with what you discover and did not know.  Read more books.

It has been properly stated that you will be exactly the same person with the same set of life results ten years from now except for two things, the persons you hang out with and the books you read.  Look closely at where you are.  Change this picture.  Dial up and get better friends and begin to read better stuff.  That's what is next!

Go make your new bucket list today.  Next time I will offer a long list of good books to read.  Most of them will be directed to help you 'fix' the mind you protect.  I protect mine, you protect yours.  That is what humans do.  Just get over it and move on to some better days.  Losing is only a temporary station of life.  Let's learn how not to remain there.

Until next time...