“Bygone troubles are good to tell.”
Yiddish Proverb
Have you ever noticed how an easy time makes for a bad story? Without a little conflict, a little adversity, a little, “How in the world did you get out alive?” a story just flops.
Nobody goes to the movies to watch the hero breeze through life without a challenge. A football game that’s a 48-0 blow-out is a snooze. Now 19-17? There’s something worth watching. Give us tension! Give us drama!
There may have been a time over the past year when you looked out the window late one night and said, “I don’t know if we’re going to make it.” You felt the fear. Every time the nightly news showed a job fair with hundreds of dejected folks lined up to plonk their resume down, a pit formed in your stomach: Please, don’t let that be me. The stakes were raised.
Well, here we are: 2012 is almost upon us and you’re still standing. Congratulations.
If your market is finally beginning to emerge from the long shadows of 2008, you can thank those difficult times for making you more resourceful, more flexible, and better prepared for the next down cycle. You can (cautiously, perhaps) begin to tell the war stories of ’08, ’09, and ’10 with a little bit of hard-earned pride.
But if your market hasn’t turned, and you don’t see any light yet: Don’t lose faith. Keep working. Stick with it and trust in yourself. You might be in the middle of your greatest story yet, and you can make it to the other side to tell your tale.
