How to Face Seemingly Insurmountable Challenges in Your Business and Still Come Out a Winner

Tales from the Online Marketing Crypt #22 Have you ever been so frustrated by a situation that you just wanted to give up and quit?

This happened to me not long ago when we made the decision to move to Hope, B.C., where we purchased a home that needed some renovations before we could move in.

Luckily (or so I thought) I was able to line up a general contractor and interior designer to help with the process who were available and ready to get to work. We all met at the new house to discuss what needed to be done and everything was proceeding perfectly.

The next step was for the contractor to provide us with a quote and then he and his team would proceed as soon as he returned from holiday in two weeks’ time.

We patiently waited for him to provide the estimate (he promised he would do this while on holiday) but it never came.

A week had passed after he was supposed to have returned from holiday, but we still heard nothing.

At this point, we were losing precious time and it was looking less and less likely that we’d be able to get the renovations done before we needed to move in. You can imagine the frustration building when the critical person needed to make all of this happen has disappeared on us!

Our emails, texts and phone calls were all being ignored.

It wasn’t until several days later that we finally heard from him. He explained he had been recovering after getting into an accident and promised to get started immediately.

Now, I don’t want to come across as insensitive here, but the accident was having a piece of wood he was chopping fly into his mouth and ribs. Ouch!

But it also happened a couple of weeks prior to him contacting us, so I have to ask, why wasn’t he able to send a quick text or email letting us know what happened so we’d be reassured he wasn’t ghosting us?

In any case, at this point, we assumed all was good and thought things were going to proceed as planned.

Nope. We never heard from him again after that.

Nothing.

No emails. No phone calls. No text messages.

And all the while, precious time was being wasted on getting the renovations done.

We were at the point where we were ready to give it all up and just move into the house, as is. Anything to get ourselves out of this hassle that was tarnishing the joy of moving into a new home.

Resilience to the Rescue

How many times have you wanted to quit when things seemed insurmountable?

When faced with one obstacle after another?

When nothing seems to be going right and you’re desperate for a win?

Even though my story is of a personal nature, I’ve had plenty of equally challenging situations come up in my business life, too.

Actually, there have been far too many to count after being in business for nearly 20 years!

In fact, there’s a situation right now that has me questioning if this is all worth it.

But is it time to throw in the towel and say, “I’m done!”?

Not a chance.

You see, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that in order to be a profitable business owner, quitting is not an option.

Resilience has to be one of the most useful tools in our toolbox, especially when we need to get through these challenges that will surely come up.

From really good employees quitting without notice to clients who don’t see the value we bring them and create a lot of stress and anxiety as we try to make them happy, resilience is what gets us through.

Grateful for Gratitude

One of the things that really helps me during times that require a lot of resilience is practicing gratitude.

What do I mean by that?

Well, instead of focusing on all the negative stuff that’s happening, try to think of something, anything you can be grateful for, and focus on that.

This practice alone can help you shift into a problem-solving mindset and get you thinking about what can be done to fix this, as opposed to running to bed and hiding under the covers with a box of chocolates and a bottle of wine. Not that I would do that… At any rate, when we shift our perspective into problem-solving mode, it’s amazing what we can experience.

• Suddenly the situation doesn’t seem so grim. It’s merely a problem that needs a solution.
• Our state of mind improves, and we can get energized just thinking about all the possible solutions we can implement.
• We are now able to recognize the opportunities that are unfolding as a result of the problem, and realize that many of these opportunities would not have presented themselves otherwise.

I know you might be thinking this is some rose-coloured glasses stuff, but honestly, it’s worked many times for me, so why not you, too?

As for our new home, with immense gratitude, our interior designer, Diane Lothian, took the bull by the horns, called in some favours, and got her crew to work on the renovations. This was all done despite her saying from the beginning she had no time to be the manager of the project!

In any case, the renovations are finally completed and we’re now sitting in our beautiful new home feeling very blessed that we didn’t give up, and instead embraced the opportunities that made it possible to get things done.

That being said, I’d like to think the outcome ended up being far better than what that original contractor could have accomplished!

To your business success,Susan Friesen

 

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

1. READ: Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference by J V Crum III.
2. WATCH: How Gratitude is Good for Business. An interview with Gratitude expert, Dana J. Smithers.
3. READ: How to Bring Gratitude into Your Life to Increase Happiness by Cheryl Bishop.
4. READ: ABC’s of Business – Gratitude by Pamela Chatry.