Dear Friends Sometimes in life we appear to have insurmountable hurdles in front of us. The world is dark and foreboding and there we cannot see a ray of sunshine anywhere. What should we do? The first thing is – DO NOT PANIC! Remember Corporal Jones in ‘Dad’s Army’? The sun will rise tomorrow, the birds will still sing and we will all have three meals and a roof over our heads and a nice warm bed. So whatever we do will not drastically alter these basic truths. When you are full of doom and gloom, think of the worst thing that can happen. What will be the consequences? Then we should look at the alternatives. Write these alternatives down on a piece of paper so we can then discover how each of these will impact on us and how much effort each will take. I think that often because we are emotionally involved, our thinking can be clouded by these sometimes out of control emotions. So, Cheryl and I often get a trusted friend involved who can look at our hurdle without emotion and guide us to a sensible and sometimes logical solution! Cheryl and I have been looking at selling our house recently. We had an idea of what it is worth. So we got several land agents to look at it and give us their opinion. However they all have an axe to grind do they not? They may want listings and therefore they will have other motives. So, whenever we buy or sell, we get a Registered Valuer, Terry Rawcliffe, to give us an independent valuation which we know we can rely on! Thus, we have taken the emotion away from our pricing decision! While emotion is a good thing, it has its place and one place where it should not be present to excess is in our decision making process. Mind you I think that we all use emotion more than we care to admit! For instance apparently the experts tell us that we make up our minds as to whether we like and trust someone we have just met within 20 seconds of meeting them!! So use your friends, business associates and advisors to guide you through the dark clouds – there is always a silver lining! With our best wishes Don and the team at Business Results Ltd