Historical Bankruptcy
HISTORICAL BANKRUPTCY
If you research the lives of many noted and successful people you will often uncover the fact that they had a time in their life that did not go well financially. Many people that achieved enormous success in their lives often had financial problems or had lost it all at some point in their life. Several had numerous cycles of losing it all gaining it back losing it again, etc. In any case, their lives were never defined by their problems and we only remember their success.
For instance, Abraham Lincoln had a small business in his home town that failed and he filed bankruptcy. Lincoln changed careers and went into law. He was one of the most successful trial lawyers of his time. The oratory skills he learned as a lawyer would later prove vital in holding a country together in a very trying time.
Filing Bankruptcy allowed him to start a new life and let him put the worries and fears of that failed business behind him. As we say in Bankruptcy, he was able to get “a fresh start” financially and just as important a fresh start emotionally. He could forget about his former business and move on with his life.
Lincoln later had another set back when he lost a key U.S. Senate election to Stephen Douglas. Undaunted by that loss and perhaps strengthened by his prior Bankruptcy, Lincoln persisted in politics and eventually received the Presidential nomination of a new untested political party and the rest is history!
Lincoln refused to let either set back (financial or political) define him, define his career or set limits on his life. Winston Churchill was a shy teenager with a speech impediment and had a life long history of depression. Did he let any of those problems stop him from his success in life? NO!!
Restructuring your debts or discharging them in Bankruptcy AT THIS POINT IN TIME may be a necessary step on the road of life. Such an action does not define who you are, define what you were or even likely to define what you can yet still become or do. This is especially true if you are no longer distracted with problems of the past.
Maybe this can best be summed up by Michael Phelps the multiple Olympic gold medal winner: “I have made lots of mistakes, in and out of the pool. It has not been easy, but I think it has made me a stronger person, a better person.”