"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm," Winston Churchill said. He did not give in to defeatists. Instead he inspired a nation and its allies to greater sacrifice and eventual victory. A recession is like a war in that its effects dig deep into the fabric of a nation, and this time the world. This is our first serious world recession. Poor credit and bad investments circle the world like storm clouds. The earth has become one economic organism, like it or not.
Churchill's admonition emphasizes enthusiasm, and that means taking dares. Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said, "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself." We must start by counting on ourselves — no passing the buck, no tooth fairy, no magic deals in the stock market, as even Warren Buffet knows now.
The only way we can count on ourselves is to be willing to embrace some level of pain. Writer John Maxwell states, "If we are growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone." Growth is a way beyond failure and lost footing. New growth has to be planned and executed along a balanced path.
The natural reaction to bad times is to cut back. Trim the sails, hunker down, and wait for the wind to abate. But, as any sailor knows, taking charge in a storm means a lot more than hunkering down. It can mean steering in a precise direction to avoid a catastrophic breach. In a recession, every one should be on the bridge and not in the ship's bar. Regaining balance will be the result of combined courageous actions at command stations.