Main Idea:
Did you play the Game of Life when you were a kid? What was the feeling when you raced to the end and collected the money for retiring first? What happened when you had set backs?
Expansion of the Idea:
Recently my mom had a house fire that was started by a faulty extension cord. It pretty well destroyed the second floor and did a lot of damage to the first floor and basement. She is perfectly fine but now has a major disruption to her life for the next 6-8 months. She lost a few important documents but they are replaceable. Overall, she came out of this in pretty good shape.
I was thinking about this and it reminded me of the Game of Life. As a kid, when you played that game, you had setbacks but you kept focused on the end goal. The end goal was to retire with the more money than everyone else. (I think we might need a little better goal. However, that was the goal of the game.) You hoped that any setbacks were minor. You stayed focused on getting the finish.
The difference between the game and real life is that real life setbacks are very emotional and can completely wipe us out. Yet, we can sometimes control the effect of the setback. All of us will get setbacks and some of them are major. However, we can minimize the impact by planning and doing some things in advance. These plans would include:
Safety, such as smoke detectors in the house.
Health, both personal and our business
Emergency, both physical and financial
Risk analysis, investments and operations
Relationships, who you can count on and who counts on you
These types of plans are not what I would normally talk about. However, when there are crises, such as a house fire or Covid, some of the above areas are the most important things for you during that period. By thinking about these things in advance, we can sometimes control the severity of the problem as well as starting the recovery process a lot quicker.
Questions to Consider:
What is my goal?
What obstacles are there to achieving my goal?
What are the possible setbacks in life and in my business?
Are there things I should do differently to minimize the negative impact of the setbacks?
Do I have an emergency plan?
If so, does my spouse and family know what it is? Or at work, do my key employees know the plan?