ARTICLE:

    How to Succeed in Hard Times
    By Celia Ann Rooney


   More and more families are being devastated by the way this economy is
headed. Bank failures, mortgage foreclosures, jobs going overseas, high gas and food
prices…hardly anyone can say they have slipped through these times unscathed. We are all
pretty much in the same boat, aren’t we, trying to figure out what to do next? How do we
protect ourselves from these hard times or do more than that— succeed in ways we have
only dreamed of?

  Obviously, we Americans are made of tough stuff and have overcome many types of
adversity in the past. We hacked this homeland out of the wilderness and defeated the
greatest empire of the world in order to declare our independence as a sovereign nation.
Our oldest generations have come through two world wars, the Great Depression of the early
1930’s, and a whole fleet of other storms. The question is not mere survival though; as
Americans, we want victory, even in hard times, no matter what it takes. The real issue
is: how do we get to real success?

  In these times, we have both the national economic crisis and the personal or family level
crises going on at the same time. When we speak of adversity, it may be poverty, disability,
grief, losses of many types enter into the mix. And what we need to succeed is a
science of success, to motivate ourselves to take the necessary action to rise up and take
our power back from the very adversity which threatened to take it away. There are many
examples of this process throughout history in the lives of people who were successful even
in hard times.

  Long before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he was a
teacher of the deaf, and after he had invented the phone and many other modern
technologies and devices and techniques, he still considered himself primarily a teacher of
the deaf. What gave him this dedication to the field of teaching the deaf to communicate? His
mother was deaf. From a very young age, Aleck, as he was called, struggled with devising
methods to help his mother participate in the family conversations in the parlor and
understand him through the vibrations and tones of his powerful voice. His father and
grandfather had worked in the field of communications as well, so the devotion
was a family tradition.

  In later tragedies in Aleck’s life, both of his infant sons died. The first, who died in 1876, the
same year as the invention of the device which changed our lives forever, died of respiratory
problems. With the pain of that loss still in his heart, Alexander Bell invented
the precursor of the iron lung, to help others survive where his own child did not. Both of these
examples in Bell’s life demonstrate how the science of success, quite literally in Bell’s case,
gave Bell the focus he needed to succeed in answering the questions: How did this
problem happen? Naming the problem is often a powerful tool in its resolution. And then: how
do we fix it? The hard times he faced as he struggled with his mother’s (and later his wife’s)
hearing disability and the loss of his infant son were personal in nature, but he did not lose
sight of the fact that if he applied his mental energies and hard work into the invention of
solutions—there he could succeed.

  The life story of Alexander Graham Bell teaches us a great deal about facing adversity
directly and doing something about it. He studied the problem directly and examined it like a
puzzle that had to be fitted together before it would make sense—and before the answer to
the problem would appear. His energies were directed constructively toward his vision of
resolution, and he had faith that no matter what the problem was, he could work long and
hard and creatively and make it better. He focused his attention where it could do some
good.

  This is what we should do as well in these hard times. We should look directly at the places
where our biggest pain and fears lie. We should develop in our minds a detailed vision for
the better reality we want to create. As the vision takes form and color in our minds, the vast
storehouse of energy that is in our minds will become available to work toward the solutions
we seek. Whether it is financial security, a stable home life, a brighter future for those
disabled or less able to care for themselves, we, like Alexander, can achieve the success we
want to accomplish.

  About the author: Celia Ann Rooney is a writer, teacher and attorney in Philadelphia and
is co-founder and chief financial officer of A New Success, LLC. She is the author of a series
of e-books devoted to self improvement and learning the principles of success through study
of the life stories of famous people, including Success Stories: the Science and Art of
Success, Success Stories II: Early Risers and Late Bloomers, and Success Stories III:
Success in Hard Times. Her books and articles are available on the website: www.
anewsuccess.com. You may contact her at: crooney@anewsuccess.com.
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