Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

The Pain Now is Part of the Joy Later
Applying a line from the movie Jerry Maguire yesterday to online marketing brought to mind a line from another favorite movie of mine.

The movie is Shadowlands. It follows the rather unconventional romance of elderly Oxford professor and popular Christan author C.S. Lewis and young American divorcee Joy Gresham. In the story, Lewis is a lifelong bachelor, with a well-settled and routine life.

He grants a meeting with Gresham, a fan of his writing, during her brief visit to England. They establish a casual friendship that grows when she later moved herself and her son to England.

When an immigration issue threatens to end her stay in England, Lewis suggests a marriage of convenience to enable her to stay. Married in name only, she continues to live in London and he at Oxford.

When she undergoes a bout with cancer, however, Lewis realizes that his feelings for his longtime friend are much deeper than he had allowed himself to realize previously.

He takes Gresham and her son into his home to care for her better. During a remission in her cancer, Lewis and Gresham take a trip. They talk of their joy in this special time together, but Lewis quickly turns somber in wondering how much longer they have together.

Gresham immediately rebukes him. She says, "The joy now is part of the pain to come. The pain then is part of the joy now."

The quote has always stuck with me as sort of deep and inscrutable. But as I have viewed the economic distress all around now, that quote has become more meaningful to me.

Joy and sorrow are not incompatible. They are the two sides of the coin of our lives. Each one is part of the other. Joy is not joy with sorrow to contrast with it. And sorrow is generally the soil from which grows our greatest joys.

Approached properly, the pain now is a necessary step toward the joy of future success. Don't believe me? One of my favorite marketing mentors, Jim Edwards, has done a whole video on this in his "The Net Reporter" training site. The video is called, "Do I Have to Go Broke Before I Get Rich?"

In the video, Jim shows how common it is that successful business owners experienced hitting bottom before they started their rise toward success. He experienced that himself. And he lays out what those who rebounded to achieve success did differently than did those who hit bottom and stayed there.

The site is a paid training site, so you I can't give you a link directly to the video. You can do two things with this post. If you want, you can simply take heart that you have the capacity to turn any pain now into future joy.

Or you can check out Jim's The Net Reporter site, search among his huge library of excellent business training materials, and see his very timely video for yourself. And once you're in The Net Reporter, mine the riches of profit-generating information in there.

How good is the material in it? The Net Reporter is the absolute last expense I would cancel. And I would cancel it only if I planned to quit doing Internet marketing forever. I think you'll enjoy it.

Jeff

Labels: Jim Edwards, mindset, The Net Reporter