Where To Draw The Line

It was a cooler than normal day in north Texas.

A slow drizzle was falling and the sound of raindrops could be heard dancing on the tin roof above the front porch. It was a sound that reminded him of the roll of waves hitting the beach. Or maybe the trickle of water passing over the rocks in a mountain stream.

This would have been relaxing to almost anyone.

But it was not relaxing to him.

He wasn’t a quitter –  not by anyone’s standard.  But he truly felt defeated.

The previous 18 months had seen his financial outlook worsen to the point that bankruptcy was advised.  He had been out of work for a couple of months and had moved his family into conditions that he considered deplorable.  He had now chosen to be self employed in a business that he believed to have potential – but at this early stage had not provided a consistent income.

But that wasn’t the reason he was standing out on the front porch in the rain.  All of the events of the prior 18 months were not why the serenity of the moment was lost in his mind.  Those events weren’t why a grown man couldn’t stop crying.

Only a few minutes earlier, that same man was inside the mobile home trying to explain to his wonderful and precious daughters why their bicycles were gone.  Not only were they gone – the reason they were gone was his fault.  The bicycles were a casualty of the war he had been losing for almost two years.  And he couldn’t afford to buy replacements for them.

So there he was, on the front porch of a rundown mobile home, in the middle of a north Texas rain.[lightbox link=”http://jeffcwest.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/tin-roof-rain.jpg” thumb=”http://jeffcwest.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/tin-roof-rain-300×200.jpg” width=”300″ align=”right” title=”tin roof rain” frame=”true” icon=”image” caption=””]

Sounds pretty sad, doesn’t it.

Yet, more than 20 years later, I can tell you that it was one of the best moments that ever happened to me in my sales and business ownership career.

“Why?” you may ask.

Because two very important things happened on that day.

The first – I got mad and drew a line in the sand for me.  No more failure!  No more mediocrity!  No more excuses!

No more!

And second…

Tune in tomorrow 🙂

QUESTION:

Where is your line in the sand?

Rain on a tin roof photo by airedrie.m.
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