A “marketing expert” started a new venture in the coffee shop-restaurant area, went through struggles to make it work but eventually before 18 months had ended, shut its doors. You can sympathise with this small business owner yet there was little, if any, evidence of the owner coming up with new approaches, new ideas or new concepts.
It’s not easy to handle the “sea of pain”, the struggle to get something new off the ground. It takes many hard working days and often little sleep or no sleep nights wracking your brain to come up with new approaches. If it’s your own money that you’ve invested in your new venture, it’s even worse. To start off something with enthusiasm and excitement and then see it slowly fail is soul destroying. You question your very purpose in life. You wonder how much you can take. You question what you are really made of and whether you can keep on going when you are depressed, have little energy and are forced to drag yourself out of the bed each morning.
I think it’s easier for business people who have learnt a craft or trade and are very proud about what they do. Take for example a bakery and delicatessen specialist in our local community. This man spent years mastering the craft of fine bakery products in France and only opened his business when he was confident in his bakery skills. The shop opens at 6 AM but the baker and his staff are already there at 5 AM. By 2 PM in the afternoon they have worked day a full eight-hour day. The baker started small and has slowly built up his business, one step at a time. He is 1st two-year struggle to get his business off the ground, to attract customers and train staff is over. Now he is enjoying success in his business as he slowly and steadily expands. If this true craftsman had to face another “sea of pain” I’m sure he has got it in him to endure, to overcome, to face the difficult times, come up with new approaches, new ideas, new concepts and make things work.
It’s often not an ordinary personality who can suffer the “sea of pain” in starting something new. It takes special people. It takes people who go beyond their limits of pain, far out into the unknown, to achieve what they truly desire in this short and sometimes abrupt, fleeting world. It’s not just the perfectionist who strives for something almost unobtainable by ordinary people but those who want to push themselves to realise their full potential, might we even say destiny.
The fruits of such labour, insight and new ways of thinking can be sweet. A business person struggled in his small business but eventually turned it into a magic machine that has provided for childrens’ higher education, paying off a bond, buying new cars, overseas holidays. All because he was able to live with and handle his “sea of pain”. Now he has the freedom to live his life as he pleases – he has been rewarded both personally and financially for the ocean of pain he was able to conquer.
