Busted, Part Three

So the rent is due, your kids need dental work, and your garage is full of junk no one will buy, in a house that is what the bankers call, “under water in an upside down home loan.”. You are busted. What to do?



So the rent is due, your kids need dental work, and your garage is full of junk no one will buy, in a house that is what the bankers call, “under water in an upside down home loan.”. You are busted. What to do?

Psychologists have noted we solve problems on planes other than we experience them. We humans experience life on physical, mental and spiritual planes. A paraplegic who will never walk again, a physical problem, will find solace on the mental plane perhaps through philosophy, or the spiritual plane by finding grace behind the suffering. Someone experiencing spiritual distress may simply move to the desert (a physical solution) or reason away (a mental solution) the challenge. A person with a mental problem may find a religious practice beneficial, or some medical (physical) procedure does the trick.

It is very likely you are in trouble because you have neglected some part of any of these three, or parts of all. The result is chaos in your financial world, but the source of the problem is some fundamental aspect. In any event, you are busted, so you can draw on any and all resources you have to improve the situation. You’ve got nothing to lose.

Let me make an observation: here in the USA at least, with our relative religious freedom, we have something of a consumers orientation towards religion, which matches our consumeristic society. (We are not materialists, where we keep everything we buy; we are consumerists, constantly unloading the recent for the new.)

Our clergy, bless their hearts, are adept at redesigning religion to cater to the tastes of those who desire religion. If one would like a religion custom designed, that is quite easy here. Hell, you can start your own religion. In so doing though, this commercialization of religion, we are confirmed in our belief we have the spiritual thing right, when in fact what we have is no more significant to our spiritual life than a redecorated family room.

The astute may ask what has religion to do with spirituality, to which I answer religion is the outward sign of the inward spiritual experience.

My guess is because we congratulate ourselves on our religious perspicacity, we rarely look to the spiritual plane to solve any problem. To all religions, happiness, peace and sufficiency, if not prosperity, are fundamental. But in their radical, orthodox forms, these religions are apparently never user-friendly. The paradox is that within their seemingly antihuman confines, peace and prosperity and happiness abound.

Ask the Amish, the Orthodox Jews, the Sikhs and such groups that adhere to strict tenets, they will show you. The problem is, what if you are none of the above? Of course, you must answer to the religion to which God calls you. And what if the religion to which you feel called is peopled with the hypocrite, the liar and the thief?

Well, why cede that religion to such people? Why pass up a third of your human experience because of some money changers at the temple? No doubt you would please God much by being the only one in that religion praising Him. You’d be a start.

And don’t be resentful of the pastor who gets liars, hypocrites and thieves off the streets and in the pews where they belong. He is just doing his job. Think what a relief the pastor will feel when someone just finally joins his congregation.

And naturally, the omniscient atheist can disregard all of this.

But for the rest of us, as humans, we are very likely to experience financial difficulties on a physical or mental plane, yet they are likely to be solved on a spiritual plane.

This dawned on me as i was listening to a radio talk show, a fellow by the name of Dave Ramsey. Ramsey was financially busted after the last real estate boom (not this one) and while in recovery he went on the radio in Nashville no charge to help others. He now has over 4 million listeners a week and a few hundred employees working in his “financial peace university” which naturally is growing right now.

Ramsey is unabashedly Christian, but I have seen his counterpart in other religions, such as Rabbi Daniel Lapin and his “Thou Shalt Prosper” book and web site. I know I’ve run across others in other religions, I just never noted it before. It seems every church has a money counseling ministry, and why not? If your flock is busted they cannot donate the wherewithal to keep the lights on and the doors open.

I can identify with Ramsey as much as nothing he says is original to him, and I am sure he would agree. Orwell said something like a first duty is to state the obvious.

Ramsey takes you through the standard advice of any consumer credit counselor : Cut up the credit cards. Sell the extra or too expensive cars, even if you are underwater. Cut back to beans and rice. Get into housing you can afford. Work, and work some more. Pay off the little debts first, work up to the big ones, and then knock those out with a sixty cents on the dollar offer or some such, and take the credit rating hit for ten years. You’re back on a cash basis anyway. The only plastic in your wallet is a debit card.

Ramsey, like Lapin, gives plenty of advice for change on the mental and physical level. Business is something we do on the physical and mental planes. Bringing a spiritual perspective to bear on a problem gives one exponentially more resources to aid in reflection.

One of the most famous recovery systems is the 12-step program, designed for substance abusers. A first requirement, or step, is to acknowledge your problems. Then at least six of the 12 steps relate expressly to one’s relationship to God.

Every religious tradition has spiritual exercises. I enjoyed Paramahansa Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi as a teen, and was particularly impressed with his ability to spot the charlatan, and keep moving. The Confessions of St. Augustine is more to my taste, and as for spiritual exercises, those developed by Ignatius of Loyola are a treasure trove.

The spiritual exercises ought clear the decks, clarify your options, settle your course for operating on the mental and physical planes, and then assist in maintaining the fortitude or whatever other virtues you need to proceed. Both highs and lows can get you off track on the mental and physical planes, the spiritual ought to keep you indifferent to those extremes, so you make progress toward the good, the true, the beautiful you set as your goal.

Another observation about these spiritual exercises: if you view them as patterns, and the behavior patterns of those in recovery and those who thrive in business, the patterns look exactly the same. It is as though the Creator who used the same look for agony as ecstasy in humans, made people in recovery and people thriving in business look alike.

Both are rather calm, but alert. Self-deprecating. Serious, but fun enough. Dedicated. Careful. Very open-minded. Sober, of course. Highly networked. Dependable and not afraid to be dependent. Creative. Both deal in passion, from the Greek root “to suffer.”

It may be because the experience of recovery and the experience of building a business is one and the same. Same resources and same methods.

Change is a fundamental in business, as it is in recovery. Extremes fail in business and recovery. But both efforts are radical.

The founder of AA and the 12-step program, a fellow referred to as Dr. Bob, summarized the program as “Trust God, clean house, help others.”

The “help others” is a key in recovery, as it is in business. It may be as simple as “if you are less selfish, you will be more successful.” I know every time I get greedy I get poorer, and every time I get more altruistic I get richer. Think of what Viktor Frankl had to say about surviving even in the most dire circumstances, when he wrote about life in nazi camps: your chances of survival are best if you first think about helping others. Well, things are not that bad, but the point withstands extreme tests.

Building a business is always based on the customers, helping others.

Ramsey’s way out was helping others. We will too, with the very product we are selling. Ramsey is doing what Ramsey should do, and we ought to do what falls to us to do.

I ended up teaching when I elected to be busted, that is a took a sabbatical from work to finish off a bachelor’s degree I left off ten years earlier. (I’ve been busted not by choice before, too) Teaching led to more teaching, which led to writing and consulting, and now I have a side business any aspiring scholar would kill to accomplish. Who knew? Steve Jobs started out on the cutting edge of microcomputing and ended up selling telephones and stereos. He has a side business making cartoons he developed when he was busted. Done right, your story will be unique, too.

In the vast field of business development, I see an error in what is taught about the role and value of small business. I am not alone among businesspeople with this view, indeed I learned it from others. I am just the only one who is mentioning the fact, so I guess it falls to me to do so. And in so doing, I guess I help others. My core work has always been in housewares, making the home a little bit better.

Dave Ramsey always asks about “household income” as a starting point, and then the debts. Rabbi Lapin makes explicit everyone should have something to sell, in the sense of a stock of some tangible goods. Ramsey wisely advises you should invest your savings. I would blend the two and say invest your savings in the business you start, in tangible products you sell. (If your business is a service, there should at least be a book.)

To my mind all of that gets mixed together into a lifestyle. The solution to a problem in a field you love is the motivation, the lifestyle is what emerges as you organize around this opportunity, and the payoff is contributing to what is good and true and beautiful. This is what we call small business.

Getting from busted to there looks like recovery work, but then it continues to look like it.

The first step when you realize you are busted is follow the others in a jam: “ I am an alcoholic, and I’ve been sober for three months,” says the recovering alcoholic.

“I was busted in the real state crash, and I’ve been building my own business for the last three months. (Then state the problem you propose to solve.)”

Now you are interesting. If anyone asks questions, answer with what you have done so far, NEVER with what you WILL do. The future should always be “hard to say.” But do be clear as to what you are working on “shoes that store energy generated while walking” or “free market medicine.” And ask people what they think. You may run across people quite knowledgeable and helpful. Perhaps even partners.

Next I want to talk about lifestyle as you develop your business, something I believe is neglected by others.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post