Dear Friends,
With almost a week left for millions to celebrate Christmas, bringing the pleasure of happiness and joy, all are in the festive mood. At the same time, all Americans here are in total shock to see what happened in Connecticut yesterday 20 innocent children who had great aspirations between the age group of 5-10 and 4 adults shot dead in Sandy Hook Elementary School. Is this bad news? Yes, of course! Imagine those families who lost their children, near and dear ones. Besides this tragedy, imagine different situations all around the globe, like the Middle East with unrest all over the place and lives being lost everyday, the world financial markets in turmoil, right from America’s fiscal cliff dead line on 31st December to the Euro zone crisis. It is all a question of good and bad news and the same theory applies to ones life. Someone that wakes up in the morning and says,everything is fine with me, my family, my job, and my business- does that mean that he/she becomes totally happy and accomplished? Not really. This is where I am going to focus on this blog.
The subject of this blog is Things go wrong, don’t they? Have you experienced it? Are you ready?
There are people out there dying, starving and suffering with various challenges. How many of us are aware of this? How many of us pay attention and take action? If human beings did not consider helping each other when in pain… Imagine what the world would be like today? Everyone needs to be prepared for good and bad times in this lifetime. Take my story for instance. The kind of pain I have endured in my life to make it to where I am today is unimaginable. The courage and determination that I demonstrated memories, memories. In 1994, I was on top of the world with no worries, plenty of money,and no debts…. then came sudden failure. I have written about this earlier. However, I would like to touch base here. These bad memories have taught me great life lessons. When I wake up every morning, I embrace the good news and am not scared of bad news. This is the perfect way of starting ones day.
When my little empire fell in 1994 after my failed attempt to start Choice Airline, it was all bad news that surrounded me. Everything went wrong, but I knew that I had to fight and get back on my feet. With sheer determination and commitment along with my honest approach, right from taking my customers, suppliers, and employees into confidence, gave me back that footing. I was surrounded by patience and I knew if I took careful steps with proper back up and planning, I could get there.
If you think that I am only surrounded by good news, you are mistaken. I face challenges and bad news every day. In fact, I too have issues that I am currently dealing with that is of very uncomfortable nature. But I know that I will get over it. I am quite focused and will find ways and means of staying out of trouble so that I can be one step ahead of the bad news and stay in the good news zone.
As I was reading the Wall Street Journal this morning, I read about a gentleman of Indian origin who lives in U.K., “The Steel King of the World” with a huge empire. A person who started to acquire steel plants which were run down in many countries and still continued to acquire many more steel plants, looking to capture the steel world. The newspaper reported that this gentleman is facing challenges. I believe he was in the list of the “Top Five Richest People” in the world up until last year. See what happened to him in just a year. It seems like he is facing serious headwinds. I am not happy to see this, but this is the reality of life. The report read that his debts are beyond manageable levels and the credit agencies have started to rate his company as junk status.
Learn to live a life where you expect good and bad news, and when you are confronted with bad news do not panic! You have to fight like this Steel King. If someone was to give me a nickname, jokingly, I would be named “The King of bad times”… but I will survive! I hope this gentleman who I am referring to will bounce back to the position he was in. These are stalwarts who have seen the ups and downs of life. I have seen it and you will see it too. Life is all a matter of failure leading to success. I am not trying to be philosophical here, but if anyone feels that from the time you are born till the time you leave this world your life is going to be filled with good news and success…. You are wrong. Condition yourself. It only takes a minute for something bad to happen. For instance, a political leader losing power or even the top notch employee losing his/her position… What happens to the power they had up until that moment? Power… money.. and arrogance. Unimaginable isn’t it?… This happens everyday…we just don’t realize it. Therefore, the people who are standing in the good news zone should be considerate to people standing on the bad news zone, thus giving an opportunity for people who have not experienced good news, yet. So dear friends, as this whole world goes through various dimensions of challenges good or bad, I want to wish every reader of mine a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
For those of you that are fortunate enough to be in the good news zone- God Bless, and for those unfortunate ones who are in the bad news zone- God Bless you too! Don’t panic… solutions will follow…