Comeback Chronicle

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Why is there so much pressure to “succeed” in America? What happens to those who don’t measure up, those who try and fail? What do we think about them – assuming we even want to consider them at all?

America has a reputation as the land of opportunity. We’ve all heard stories about immigrants that have come here with only a few dollars in their pockets and have struck it rich from pure determination and a little luck. In fact, almost everyone has come to America as an immigrant and many of them were limited in funds and experience when they arrived. As each generation passes, we compare ourselves to our forebearers in a continual effort to do better than the generation before us. It is highly unlikely that you will ever hear someone say that they want a lower standard of living than their parents had.

The pressure to succeed in America is so high that “failure” and its impact and recovery process are rarely discussed, except in the context of how to avoid it at all costs. It’s understandable. It’s a depressing subject. And, now with the massive popularity of the book “The Secret”, there are people who believe that even thinking about failure can call it into being (we’ll discuss that in another posting.)

Where does that leave the entrepreneur or business person who has suffered a setback? Isolated and without support, for the most part. Authors John van der Graaf and Ralph Blakey discuss the resounding silence about failure in this article.

“If you want to learn how to succeed in virtually anything, however, there is a plethora of sources giving great advice. Your favorite bookstore is stocked with business and self-help books telling you how to succeed in whatever endeavor you choose. You can even learn how to successfully build a deck on your home if you buy the right book or go to the correct website.

This advice is given by people who have achieved “success” in their chosen fields. We all emulate them. However, there are many people who have read all the books, done all the right things, and yet have failed, or are struggling in their business endeavors. The thing worth considering is that none of these authors ever write about when they made a mistake. Has any author of a book on how to successfully build a deck ever told you how much lumber he wasted until he learned to do it right? Has the author of the self-help book admitted to how many failed marriages she has had? Probably not.

There is truth to the statement that we learn from our mistakes.”

And, that’s what this blog is about. Shining a bit of light into our dark corners so that others who are struggling to stay upright or have fallen down and could use a pat and a hand up will know that there are others out there who have been there, done that, and sold the T-shirt on Ebay.

This is an interactive space. A place to talk about what happened, what you learned, and how you are getting or will get back in the saddle. Not just financially either. There is, as I’m sure you know if you’ve been through it, an intellectual, emotional and physical recovery process as well.

If you’d like to guest-write an article on this blog about this rarely discussed topic, please do let me know. If you just want to leave a short comment or reference source, that’s more than welcome too.

Shine that light. You and someone else will be the better for it.

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