Heartbreak and Business!

We all been there. When your personal life can ruin your business life. This can happen in many ways. It could be a death in the family, the ending of relationship, or number of bad events that we as humans face and go through. But what is worse is when these events get pull into your business life and start messing the whole place up.

So, here some background information to give me some street credit before we begin. The last two years I had ever one of these things happen to me. I had wanted future relationship over before it started, someone(s) vandalize my classic car, and a death in the family. At times I want to yell at everyone so bad. But I knew if used my giving nature replies to the situation, there only one outcome: total destruction of everything.

So how did I cope? I lay down some rules of me to follow so things would get out hand. To quote Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, “Man’s got to know his limitations!” Knowing yours can help hold things together when world feel like going to rip apart. Let’s jump into those rules I came up.

Rule One: Not everyone gives a damn about your problem. When something bad happens the normal thinking is to tell everyone because maybe someone knows how to fix it. This not always the case. Some people have problems of the own and you may just come off as whining. Does this mean you current situation is not important? Of course not. It means people can only look at things through their eyes.

For example, I started telling the clerk at the supermarket about classic car have the windows almost being broken out by street thugs. In turn she might thinking about not have enough money to pay light bill. The last thing she would care about somebody whining about classic car and might reply that way. Both of our problems are important. But level of important is different. Which leads to rule two.

Rule Two: Don’t take anything to personal. After something bad happen to you it’s easy to take every little thing to heart. For example, You could get short changed at the coffee shop. In the state of feeling ruined, you might start thinking the clerk is out to get you. But really he was just in a rush to get to the next customer. Or even more common, someone uses a word and you take right to heart. This can happen a lot. I notice then the world feels like it is crashing in on me, every little thing that said, I over analyze. This taking things way to personal and wanting “even the score” leads to more hurt feelings and more problems in the future. If something really bugs you about something somebody said, here my advice: walk away and find some way to laugh at it. Don’t waste time on it.

Rule Three: Look for the good in the situation. There always a silver lining, the goal is to find it. In my case, trying to build “dream” out come in my personal life was leading to building “nightmare.” As we all know as we get older, our goals change. With this change comes a change in what important to us as well. When I started building this “dream” life, I had fixed way it was all going to work. Life doesn’t work that way. All it did was wore me out until one day, I just quit. It took a couple of month to see I quit believe in it years ago and just working at a place you hate, you are just running through day by day hope someday it will stop. Here the silver lining: I now know if I stop joying it, I should stop doing it. You can’t dig yourself out of hole. You need to stop and climb out.

Rule Four: Never doubt your decisions you made in the situation. This one is a real killer. Even tell about this rule I have a hard time following it. For example, I had to deal with death in my family and the first thing that came to mind after it happen, why did I do or why did I do that. Self doubt is bad enough but sorrow can make it worse. I’ve spend hours wondering about the extra time I took off, put my career on hold, and having no personal life with the hope that things would change and take a different path. Was it worth it? It the time it was and that all that counts. It easy look back at the person you were yesterday and judge but understand starts with the man in the mirror. At the time you had to make decisions. I always put my mind to rest by answer one question: Did I do everything I could? If I answer yes, then I should move on.

Rule Five: You got to keep moving! After something like all this, you got to keep moving and get your mojo back. It so easy to just quit, feel like there no more to life, and just run through the motions. But life is moving forward, the proof of is the sun keeps coming up everyday and sets every night. I not saying, don’t give yourself time to heal but sometimes (in my case) being able to start new goals is healing within itself. For example, I should start having a personal life, maybe girlfriend, go fishing, and travel more. I should start working on building my business and make new connects with people in my field. And most of all, start building a “Jed” I want to see in the future. As we know getting started is hard but little steps can lead to big things.

So try out these five rules to help keep together when the world feels like going to crash in on you. After all this bad luck, I am looking to the future and you should too. Because these last two years had a bunch of ending for me but there is upside, I have a bunch of beginnings. New business opportunities, new relationships, new places, new adventures, and most important a new me. Here to the future, I stoke because the best is still to come!