Mind-forged Manacles
Dec 18th, 2008 by Geoff
Isn’t this a wonderful time?
The news is spilling with talk of cut-backs and recession and disappearing capital and suicidal brokers but I just keep thinking…isn’t this a wonderful, purifying, catalytic time! A timeto create and re-create, a time to produce and re-produce, a time to burn off the redundant and the spent as we rocket through the white hot stratosphere of new possibilities.
People are worried.
Good! Worry is a fuel, it can be utilised.
People are frightened.
Great! Nothing like fright to shake up the complacent norm and add a little turbo to positive action.
People are terrified.
Terror? Wow! Now we are talking. Now my agitated friends we are cooking up new possibilities on gas-mark-5. Nothing stirs the soul and fires the spirit like a sprinkle of terror on your morning cornflakes. It gets people off the settee, it gets folk out of their made-for-the-bigger-person comfy-chair, it places a rocket up the arse of the old, tired, uninspired lives.
Man what a f****g amazing time this is.
We are watching history unfold. We are history unfolding.
Recessionary times create revolutionary ideas. Recessionary times give birth to revolutionary people. Recession is the pre-curser to great innovation.
Did you know that the entire $ multi-billion film industry in the USA was born out of the twenties depression?
Out of the last recession we had here in the 80’s my friend John Harrison built a multi-million £ business on a start up fund of £500.
My other friend Mike Liptrot was made redundant as an electrician at the same time and he was scared; he ploughed his fear of penury into Judo. Today he is one of the top coaches in the world. In the world!
The whole of the Ford car empire only started because people did not have any money. Did you know that? Ford was passionate (driven even) about manufacturing a vehicle that was affordable for everyone.
You (yes you!) have been looking for a burst of energy for a very long time, you have wanted out of your spent existence for as long as you can remember and wasn’t it only last Christmas (and the Christmas before add infinitum) that you announced ‘it is time to change!’ only to abandon the notion on Jan 2nd when the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ got mugged and left for dead by the hangover of Christmas past?
Man this is such an amazing time. There has never been a better time to brush the cobwebs off your old dreams and air them in the light of new possibilities. There has never been a better time to stifle the cry of woe and instead channel the cry in battle against those mind-forged manacles. For the resigned man there has never been a better time for Renaissance.
The good life is not a lottery! Do not doubt me on that. The good life is a choice, and that choice is often made in times of inferno. And the current climate is offering all the start-up energy and all the incentive and all the fear that you need to make it so.
There has never been a better time.
And with ‘the inferno’ still very much in mind, let me leave you with the words of Dante because you need to hear them and you need to hear them today because there was never a better time.
‘Now is the time to rouse yourself’,
The master said; ‘for sitting on a cushion
Is not the way to fame, nor staying in bed.’
Be well.
Geoff Thompson