Shit happens!
Marketers release much better versions of the product you were about to bring out…
Autoresponders get hacked and your hard earned list is lost forever…
Customers win their Paypal disputes despite you doing nothing wrong…
(All of these things have happened to me)
Yes, shit definitely happens online.
And when you are going through whatever version of the brown smelly stuff you are going through, it is very difficult to agree with Napoleon Hill’s quote:
“In every adversity is the seed of an equal or greater benefit”
So with that in mind, here is a tale to put things into perspective and to show that problems now can not only be overcome…
…they can be the very thing that leads you to even greater success.
My story is of a lad who originates from the same neck of the woods I come from; Birmingham (that’s the version in the Midlands of the UK, rather than the Deep South of the US).
This lad had always loved playing the guitar and was pretty good at it.
He got so good that a group who had just hit the big time with a hit in the charts signed him up for their band.
He had made it. No more dirty, loud factory work for him…
…all very good news and a dream come true for a working class lad.
However, fate had other plans for him!
He had to work his notice out at the sheet metal factory and on his very last day, he and a bit of the machinery in the factory had a bit of a falling out.
This falling out, resulted in him losing the tips of some of his fingers!
This would have been bad enough for anyone, but for a budding guitarist who was just about to go professional, it was frankly catastrophic!
Of course, the group who had wanted him to play with them had to replace him.
At this point, the majority of us might think that this was some pretty mean trick being played by the cosmos.
But as the quote goes, “In every adversity is the seed of an equal or greater benefit”
Determined to still play the guitar, the guy melted down an empty washing up liquid bottle to create artificial finger tips.
…and although this worked, it meant he had to learn to play guitar in a totally different way.
He also had to change the strings used on the guitar AND reduce the tension in the strings.
The guitarist in question was Tony Iommi who soon hooked up with Ozzy Ozbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward to create Black Sabbath.
Sabbath and their distinctive sound, partially created by the way that Tony now had to play his guitar, is often credited with inventing heavy metal!
…Oh yes, and the professional group that were going to employ Tony didn’t even make a ripple on the history of popular music and disappeared without a trace.
So when life seems to be dumping on you from a great height, just remember who knows what it could mean in the long term.
(As a PS I was lucky enough to see Black Sabbath’s very last gig recently, which just happened to be in our home town…and I can confirm the man can still play a mean riff!)
