Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2010. Its reference to the current financial crisis means the post-2008 crisis, and its remarks about Gates weathering it reflect his situation at the time.
I once read a phrase: “Some people aren’t frightened by change, because they find it easy to adapt to it. People who don’t see obstacles along the way, but the opportunities that lie behind them.”
And when we talk about that kind of person, what better example than someone truly admirable in the world of business?
Bill Gates. Seeing him today, we tend to forget that he comes from a humble family. Like many of us, he faced obstacles along the way. He, too, had people telling him: “I don’t think you’ll make it.” But he did make it, and then some. He overcame the hurdles of his early days, and he has certainly managed to hold his ground in the current financial crisis. This computing genius is estimated to earn the frivolous sum of 24 million euros a day. Most of us, in his place, would only work three days.
Human beings tend to get scared when change comes, instead of adapting to it. Now is precisely the time we should be thinking about new business ideas, about how to refocus our business if it’s losing money, and so on. But no. The most common thing you hear people say is simply that things are very bad, that the government is to blame, and so on and so forth.
If we spent the time we devote to complaining on thinking up productive solutions of our own, we’d be much better off. Long ago, someone told me that a person with negative thinking ends up making everything around them negative, including their own personal situation. Why look for someone to blame instead of looking for solutions? If you really believe the government and the banks are solely to blame, congratulations: you’ve found the problem. But those two culprits have their own situation sorted. They’ve already found their way through the crisis, and they keep making money. So unless you’re planning to open your own bank or go into politics, I think you should stop crying and go find your own bottle.
Featured image: Kuhlmann /MSC, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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