Money is not always all about the money…

A reminder just popped up on my calendar letting me know that next week is the 18th anniversary of my first $10,000 day.  Every year for the past 17 years I have taken a few minutes to think about that day and the events that led up to it. In the preceding months I had hit bottom. I went broke. Lost my house, my car, closed down my business (which in the early '90's had generated a low 6 figure income) but by '95 things were bad and by mid '96 they were unimaginable. My world, my business, my family, everything was incredibly disrupted… I was embarrassed, ashamed and at times I found comfort in simply, mindlessly, playing solitaire.

God working in mysterious ways, silver linings, whatever… 

I saw an opportunity… and even though I was depleted in every sense of the word I mustered the courage, and the will, to move forward. The opportunity was the Internet… more specifically, teaching small business owners how to use the Internet to build their business and add to their profits.

That day, October 17, 1996, I took 4 phone calls from small business owners wanting my help… in hindsight I can tell you with absolute certainty that depositing that $10,000 in my anemic bank account wasn't nearly as important as the deposit that was made in my "emotional bank account".

Because others valued me, and trusted me, and because I knew I could exceed their expectation (which I went on to do) my spirit came back to life. I regained my sense of meaning and contribution. I saw a light nearing from what had been a very long and very dark tunnel. defibrillator-1

Today I would never value a person's worth, mine or anyone else's, in terms of money but when we become emotionally depleted providing value to others and being compensated for it, financially or otherwise, can be just the defibrillator we need to bring our spirit back to life.  

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