Many years ago a friend, we’ll call him Bob, visited my retreat center in Pennsylvania. He had just discovered his wife was having an affair and was devastated. He arrived late in the evening and my husband and I listened long into the wee hours, doing our best to console him. He took the position that there was no reason to live. He had dreamed of a family and children, and believed that he had neither a wife to return to, nor any chance of saving his marriage. His vision for the future was dead.
The afternoon of his second day, my five year old daughter announced she was writing my friend a letter. With painstaking attention she labored over the note with her crayons. She ran into the living room, gleefully handed him the note, and skipped outside to play.
My friend opened the note and burst into tears. He showed me the crayoned letter and it said, “When you have fear, sit and talk with it. Don’t push it away.”
That note changed Bob’s life. He did sit with his fear and allowed it to speak to him. In that willingness to sit and “talk with the fear” a solution came to him. He returned home to his wife, told her how much she meant to him, and asked if they could work things out. They did, and now many years later, they have a wonderful family, a solid marriage, and a continuing vision for the future.
How often we allow setbacks to ruin our vision of the future. Bob sat with his fear and learned from it that day. No matter how complex the problem seems, the answer may come from something as simple as the crayoned note of a child, a song, the advice of a friend, a seminar, a book or a quiet moment to reflect.
Rather than look at fear as an enemy, use it to fuel your vision. Let it assist you in moving towards your goals. Voicing a vision, writing it down, and accepting that any setback contains the seeds for success is a key to running a successful business.
If we learn to sit with our fear, and cultivate the ability to learn from it, we too will find the solution contained within the problem and move beyond the problem into the fulfillment of our goals and dreams. All it takes is the courage to sit and listen.
