My financial mess after the downturn caused by the 9/11 attacks.
Stay motivated. pay your bills and make a lot of money. Yeah, right you say. Amazing isn't it? In the bad times all we think about is how to make more money to pay our bills plus we are more humble about our lives and our problems. I know because a few years ago after the 9/11 attacks my business was hanging by a thread and I thought it was all over for me after 20 years of being in the site construction business in Florida. Everything was caving in around me and I was becoming more and more depressed by the day. One night lying in bed, the thought of suicide entered my mind if only briefly. I could not do that I decided but it did enter my mind. Moving forward from that point I started to piece together my problems. I owed a lot of money to several creditors and nasty letters were coming in regularly with an occasional lawsuit. All seemed to be lost for sure, I could not see any daylight. Everyday was a huge effort as the fear of failure weighed on me like a wet sandbag on my back. I wanted to quit my business and run away.
After a couple of months of agony and many sleepless nights I decided to face my crisis head on. I called each one of my creditors and talked directly about how much I owed them and said that I had every intention to pay them off if they would just be patient with me in my financial dilemma. I put up a bulletin board in my office to show the depth of the debt and to whom it was owed. That board was important because it made me focus on the reality of the situation and what progress we would be making. I started making small payments such as $100 on a $3000 debt just to show them that I was serious about meeting my obligations. It felt like such an uphill grind and that the progress was so slow. However, I did feel like I was doing SOMETHING and I was amazed that most of my creditors appreciated that I was making an effort. In the meantime I kept working my business the best I could in my depressed state of mind.
The one thing I did in my night of desperation was to literally get on my knees and pray for guidance. I read in the Bible that God has every hair on your head counted and that He feeds the sparrows of the fields so we should not worry. Well, that certainly was a tall task given the fact that I had two kids in college and one in private high school, plus a mortgage, car payments and a wife counting on me. But I just decided to keep on my path, pay down creditors, and doing the work that I've always known best.
As time went on, the skies began to clear a bit, a couple of projects went our way and we slowly paid off the outstanding debts. That was about 5 1/2 years ago and now we are back to doing business as usual but those dark days are always in the back of my mind. I never ever take for granted any prosperity that comes my way and I feel that it is all a blessing from God, even those desperate days. I know that prosperity is fleeting much as life itself is and we have tough times we are in now and a recession on our horizon so we need to get tough and pray for guidance as I still do on a regular basis.
When in a crisis, the main thing we must leave behind is DENIAL, we cannot be afraid to let important people in our lives in on what's going on and don't try to sweep it under the rug. The sooner we can own up to it, take responsibility for it and take the small steps necessary to make the healing and correction begin.
