Opportunity in Failure

Well, the store is closed and the bank account has exactly $28.00 in it. The bill pile is high and bankruptcy is likely. I now owe my parents more than their retirement fund, my husband is job-hunting and I'm earning about $50 a week writing. That's not really covering the house, 2 cars, utilities, groceries and so on and so forth.

Yes, at times I want to bury my head under my pillow and cry. But that won't make things better and it won't feed, clothe and shelter my three children nor my husband and me. So, just as a tell my daughters to do every time they develop sudden and extreme aches and pains when it is time to go to school, I am going to choose my day, my life.

Which door holds our
next adventure?

I am going to choose to see the vast opportunities in what most people see as a devastating failure.

Psychologists tell us that if you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel. That's really a whole other post and I've touched on this before, but essentially you are what you think. If you have the cognizance to step back and objectively view your thoughts, you can see that they shouldn't always be believed. If I think to myself that "I'm a failure," the objective part of my mind says, "You haven't failed. A business failed due to a lack of capital. 80% of small business owners go through the same thing. There is no shame, only the opportunity to learn and move forward toward success."

I am choosing to see bankruptcy as freedom from crushing debt. It won't all be gone. We'll still owe relatives and student loans, but the possibility of (legally) walking away from cars and a home that are worth less than we owe is, frankly, liberating. I want to pay every small business I owe money to: the wonderful pediatrician who has taken excellent care of my children for the past 6 1/2 years, the hospital where two of my children were born, the company that took such good care of my lawn... but I can't. Not today anyway. Feeding and sheltering my family comes before everything else. You accept these basics when you're  reduced, financially, to nothing.

I'm choosing to see opportunity in failure. We can do anything and go anywhere now. We have nothing tying us to a specific location. The world is open to us. It's time to get creative and take the reigns to a new life. I'm scared, but we'll get through it one breath and one positive thought at a time.