Jim HInshaw
Contributing Writer
Improvement Professional, President & Sales
Last month I wrote about bad news travels fast, maybe faster than good news. This month, I have a question for you: have you had a bad day? I don’t mean a rotten day, where you had something that was supposed to happen not happen. And I don’t mean a day where you were late, or missed an appointment completely. No, the bad day I am referring to is one where it cannot be fixed with money. Where you are facing a giant of a problem. A problem of Goliath proportions.
We can group problems into several categories: Financial, physical, emotional, spiritual, and family. Start with financial. There is story after story of people who went bankrupt late in life, started over at age 50, 60, or even later. And still made a fortune by doing things others said couldn’t be done. Here is one: Yuval Zaliouk, 74, is co-owner of YZ Enterprises in Toledo, Ohio. He was the conductor of the Toledo Symphony in 1989 and just couldn’t take another move with his family for another job. The answer was his dream: to make and sell cookies based on his grandmother’s recipe, right out of his home. His dream took off, he won entrepreneur of the year in 2003, making lots of cookies, selling them in all 50 states, and they are available in Trader Joe’s and Publix.
Got lots of these examples, go to Boomer careers, where I found the article about Yuval.
Physical: this can be overwhelming. I recently had a bout with Basil Cell Carcinoma, where I had a spot on my forehead that was cancerous. Doctor removed it, that same week I traveled to Las Vegas for business, got an eye infection! So where is the good news? Was able to go into Walgreens on the strip, see a doctor without an appointment, get my medication almost instantly, get on my way fast. Not possible a decade ago. They are using more exact techniques to remove my cancer than ever before, so in some ways, this is a good time to be sick. Lots more options available today than in the past.
Emotional, where we feel overwhelmed by life and all it throws at us. Again, we have a ton more options to us these days than our parents and grandparents had. They just had to suffer through it. We don’t, we can start a healthy lifestyle, eat better, drink more water, stop smoking, and maybe even start a drug that can intervene for us. We have counseling, group meetings, therapy, all kinds of treatments that can help.
Spiritual. In our busy lives we just don’t take time to reflect on who we are, what we are here for. We need to understand that we are not just here to take up space, but to be involved with others that we can either learn from or teach. There is a space in our hearts that can only be filled with a relationship with God. He wants to be part of our lives, and he will walk us through any sort of opportunity we are facing, any giant in front of us.
Finally, family. The source of both our deepest comfort and at times deepest disappointment. People can let you down, but at times they will rise above any concept of what we expect them to do. Often at the most important times. To us, family is the most important element of all, it is who we are connected to all of our lives.
My message to you today is simple, but complex. No matter what you are facing, take courage. You have resources that people did not have a decade ago, even a few years ago. I know what you are thinking; this insurance today is a mess.
Understand, my family is fighting for coverage right now with a very unresponsive group. And we are facing a giant of our own, the giants don’t respect wealth, age, or geography. So today, don’t give up, dig in. Believe in your abilities and the ability of those around you, do all you can. We never know how much we are capable of until we do more than we have ever done before.
Thanks for listening, and understand I prayed for each of you today while writing this. We’ll talk next month.