How do you handle disappointment? Getting your dreams and wants bashed is not easy. Yet in business, things go wrong more often than right. The big deals seem to vanish as quickly as they appear. Your plans of success and riches linger on the drawing board longer than you wish. How many times do you hear that life is not fair? How many times do you blame others for your disappointments? Sooner or later, we become disappointed because we fix the possibility of reality on wishful thinking. And when the success gods look the other way, we feel cheated. Ah, the trap of expectations. We are told to expect to win, to expect our dreams will become our reality, our riches will materialize, our children will be successful, and our business will flourish- we merge wishes and dreams with a visualization of being. And when our hopes don’t happen, we are disappointed. I have never met a fledging entrepreneur who talked about the possibility of failure and built a rescue plan. Yet, we have insurance polices, fire extinguishers, and seat belts- just in case. As a small businessperson, you need a rescue plan. I advise anyone seeking my comments about starting a business to plan on of doing half the sales volume you expect and to expect it will take twice as long to meet your goals than you wish. Going into business is an act of optimism. And we buy into the cliché’ that “failure is not an option,” hoping a few words will control the outcome of our actions. Ah, if only that were so, getting rich would be as easy as getting a parking ticket. But the actions and reactions of others are never on our timetable no matter our wishes. Now that I laid out this depressing news that the world is not waiting to reward our every efforts, what do we do to buck the trend and get to the winner’s circle? Plan, plan, plan. But not all plans have any merit. To have a plan of success is too assume that what we do will follow our timetable and that our customers, competitors, and employees will react as we wish. Our plans of success too often omit any attention to such elements as the economy, the weather, and the changing tastes of the market. Big or small businesses plan and the gods laugh. OK you are disappointed now what do you do? Start over, but before you do, learn from your disappointments, learn from failure -it is a stern taskmaster and an unrelenting teacher. But valuable lessons come from repeated attempts if the goal is realistic and the resources are there to bring it about. Repeated attempts at impossible dreams only bring repeated disappointment. Playing the lottery every day does not mean that someday you will be a winner; it means you are trusting the outcome to luck and only luck. Gamblers or stock traders with a system are always suspect of dreaming and a hoped for formula for finding the Holy Grail. And such approaches rarely work. If you are tossing about plans to launch a business, a new product or expand, your company- try a focus group and stay away from denial. Test your plans on friends and strangers- and listen to the answers. If you seek opinion, do not let yourself debate the answer when it is not what you wish to hear. Truth is not always welcome. Remember the tales of messengers losing their heads. Do not confuse a negative response with negative thinking. Do not confuse the lack of enthusiasm with narrow thinking. When we do not hear the words we hunger for, the natural reaction is to blame the messenger. We are too intent on the need to convince others and forget about the importance of listening and it only from listening that we learn. Those who see their dreams become reality have learned the lesson of listening. Dr. Paul E Adams, Professor Emeritus Business Administration Ramapo College of New Jersey Author “ Fail Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful.” Available at Amazon.com If you have questions about your business, contact me at drfailproof@earthlink.net.