Have you ever had a project or a day when everything that happens all goes wrong? I just had an experience that I needed to share. My wife is a realtor, so we move quite often. As a matter of fact last weekend was our 10th move in our 27 years together so far. We have built houses, bought new houses, bought older houses and remodeled houses. To say the least, we have had some experience in moving and remodeling. We live in the Nashville, TN area, which right now is one of the hottest real estate markets in the country.

Last month my wife calls and she has found a “deal” that will sell fast. I literally had to stop working and go see this little gem. It was more like the lump of coal than the diamond she described, but I agreed to go see it. The location is the best we ever had and the view is truly spectacular. The house however needs a lot of work. We place an offer and it is accepted that night. The plan is to remodel and move in 30 days. What could go wrong? We had done it before and we knew with the right plan, we could pull this off.

So, the remodel list includes new bathtub/shower, new tile, new hardwood floors, new carpet, new paint, repaired trim, new hardware, new faucets, new granite, new back splash and new appliances. All to be complete in 30 days. But 2 weeks in it all goes wrong. We had to fire a contractor, our flooring gets delayed and we have to extend by 11 days. So, we are still Okay.

Image by graur codrin at www.freedigitalphotos.net

Now I am a very positive thinker and a believer in the law of attraction. I am not sure where my thinking went wrong but in a two week period, here is everything that went wrong. The flooring installers never showed up so our flooring had to be laid while we were moving in and the appliances had to be cancelled and could not be delivered for another week. Our toilets were in different rooms because the bathroom floors had not been installed, so at 10:00 p.m. the night of our move in, we had to go to a hotel to sleep and let the installers keep working all night to finish moving. The hotel charged us double because of our dog. We had no way to cook or keep drinks cold for 7 days. So, we had to eat out 3 meals per day and live out of a Styrofoam cooler, because our coolers where packed in boxes, somewhere.

Simultaneously, my business experienced a major change that I had to immediately devote a lot of time to correcting and my wife had experienced a difficult large deal that required a lot of time on her part.

Literally in a two week period, life had all gone wrong for us. We really were not sure if either of us would recover from our 16 to 18 hour days, trying to keep it together. But just like a passing storm that seems will never end, 7 days later, all is back calm and we are back on track. Sometimes when it all goes wrong, you just have to put your head down and push hard, have faith everything will work out exactly as planed and the storm will surely pass and the sun will shine again.

“And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow”. —Gilbert K. Chesterton

I appreciate Tim sharing his experience. We all have similar stories. 

Circumstances in life can make you bitter or better, it depends upon your response - James Barber

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       James Barber

       Author of The Networking Guru

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