Have you ever found your self thinking these words when something unexpected happened to you in your business? “Oh, oh, here comes trouble?” 
It is not hard to see all the grief and hardship that surrounds us in the world today. Hard copy and online magazines and newspapers, along with an infinite amount of blogging, abound with the quandaries we find ourselves facing. To name just a few, there is Japan’s traumatic earthquake, the deadly tornadoes that have hammered the United States, the renewed global oil crisis, uncertain gasoline prices, budget cuts to the United States public schools, and the health crisis that we all face due to our unhealthy living and eating habits.
All of this reminds me of an article that in appeared in Harpers Weekly Magazine some time ago. Here is a portion of that article. “It’s a gloomy moment in the history of our country. Not in the lifetime of most men has there been so much grave and deep apprehension. The domestic situation is in chaos. The dollar is weak around the world. Prices are so high as to be utterly impossible. The political caldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty. A foreign power hangs as usual like a cloud-dark and silent upon the horizon. It’s a solemn moment. Of our troubles, no man can see the end.”
The interesting thing is that as much as that description could fit the year 2011, it was written in October 1857. It seems that there was as much trouble, if not more in the world, at that time, than there is now. I guess some things never change.
Where we might not be able to change the world and what happens in it, we can change our attitude and how we respond to the problems and trouble we experience in our own lives. As self development guru Brian Tracy says, we need to look at trouble as merely “feedback from the universe.” This feedback is simply giving us information we can choose to act upon. By acting upon it in a way that seeks a solution, we can make the situation and ourselves better. By looking at trouble as a friend who is giving us some feedback, it can help us create a completely new perspective and attitude towards it.
Celia Luce put it this way, “A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper viewing distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway to eternity.” Her perspective on trouble is filled with insight.
By learning how to use the trouble we experience in our own lives, to respond in a manner that improves our situation, can be a key to true happiness.
