One foot in front of the other

Sometimes it just seems like life wants to beat you down. Nothing goes right, if there's a light at the end of the tunnel you sure can't see it, and there's just no motivation left.

Photo by hughryanmcdonald

We all have these feelings sometimes. Heck, sometimes life just isn't rosy, sometimes business sucks, there's no income coming in and there doesn't seem to be much prospect of any coming soon.

If someone tells you that "make lemonade from lemons" story right now, you'd want to scream, because nobody is buying the lemonade. You don't want to hear about rainbows, either, right? You are flat out of ideas, there is no place to turn, no wriggle room, nothing but bad news and more bad news.

OK. I've been there. So have lots of other people. And it may be just as bad as it looks or worse. This could be the end of your business. Maybe it really is time to flush it all away and do something else. Maybe..

But maybe not. I'm not going to give you a pep talk. I'm not going to try to cheer you up or ask you to look for the silver lining. All I'm going to tell you is what I do:

Put one foot in front of the other and keep walking.

That's all. Maybe in another twenty feet I'll fall over and never get up, but until then, I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I'm going to keep doing what I do. I'm going to look for new business, try to find new ideas, try to find a way to keep going. I'm not going to pretend that everything is wonderful; I know that it isn't. I'm not going to hope for a miracle of good luck; I believe we make our own luck. I'm just going to keep doing the best I know how to do for as long as I can.

Simplistic? Sure. But it's gotten me this far, hasn't it? I've been working for myself for decades, and I'm still here. There have been good years and bad years. I've had times when I've looked in that morning mirror and thought I had to be on my last ropes. But I wasn't.

Does this sound like the old "Never give up" pep talk? No, it isn't that. Sometimes you do have to give up. That's reality: sometimes we fail. But until that is absolute reality rather than just a high percentage probability, just keep walking. Do what you do, do it as well as you can, and it might be that a month from now you look around and by gum, you are still walking. Still alive, still surviving.

Do you have anything better to do?

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