Your Time of Blazing Noon

War.

Economic concerns.

Poor business.

Unemployment.

It sure looks bad, doesn't it?

But I also want to remind you that we have lived,
survived and prospered though far worse times.

For example:

In 1780 George Washington said, "We are without
money; and have been so for a great length of time..."

He went on to create an estate worth three-quarters of
a million dollars when he died.

In 1840 a traveler wrote, "So great is the panic, and
so dreadful the distress, that there are a great many
farms prepared to receive crops, and some of them
actually planted, and yet deserted, not a human being
to be found upon them."

But we got over that problem, too.

In 1857 an editorial stated, "It is a gloomy moment in
history. Not for many years---not in the lifetime of
most men who read this newspaper---has there been
so much grave and deep apprehension."

That passed, as well.

In 1873 this country had a panic that shook the nation.
A newspaper wrote:

"All over the country manufacturers are closing their works
and discharging their operatives, simply because they can
neither sell the goods they make nor borrow money to
carry them until the demand for them revives."

Yet we survived that panic, too.

In 1893 one man wrote of the troubling times he saw:

"I have been through all the panics of the last thirty
years, but I have never seen one in which the distress
was so widespread and reached so many people who
had previously not been affected as this panic of 1893."

And we got through that one, too.

We also got through the Great Depression of 1929,
two World Wars, and even the Y2K panic.

What appears to be gloom and doom is often just the
focus of the media. Consider what Gandhi once said:

"When I despair, I remember that all through history
the ways of truth and love have always won. There
have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time
they can seem invincible, but in the end they always
fall. Think of it... always."

I could go on and on. The point is this: Life will always
have ups and downs. The secret is to flow with the tide
as best we can. Complaining about what is keeps you
from spotting or even creating new opportunities.

In every panic, in every generation, men and women
with eyes wide open saw and seized opportunities.

Whether it was George Washington who went on to
become president and build his own fortune, or P.T.
Barnum who went on to prosper during the Civil War,
the fact remains:

Circumstances don't make you, you make you.

This "bad time" might become the greatest period
of prosperity for you.

Maybe you just have to relax your demands. In 1941
Bruce Barton wrote, "I have been out of a job three
times in my life. Each time I made a survey of my
surroundings and discovered that there was work to
be done, though not the same kind of work I had
been doing."

Barton was a best-selling author, Congressman,
popular speaker, and founder of one of the largest
advertising agencies in the world, BBDO. He also
became a millionaire.

And don't fall for the trap that the past was better
than the present. In 1907 the famous tycoon John
Rockefeller said:

"People sometimes talk as if we older men lived in a
day of peculiar opportunity, as if there were no chance
today for a young man to do what has been done by my
generation of men, as if all the avenues were closed,
all the big things done. Nothing could be more mistaken.
Why, the time in which I opened my eyes was a midnight
of darkness, and this is blazing noon."

A word to the wise: Listen, act and prosper.

There are opportunities around you.

Which will you see first and act on now?

This is your time of blazing noon.