The past year has been an especially challenging one for business owners, as I know firsthand. For my small business, 2020 started off very slowly amid much uncertainty related to the pandemic. My company was missing out on several business opportunities that we normally participated in.

But it wasn’t until my largest customer shut me out of a big project that I realized my business was trending in a negative direction. This particular customer has a policy of always using two suppliers for every project, but I was told that this time they had awarded all their business to my competitor, primarily because of a misunderstanding of my proposal. It seemed incredible to me that the customer had somehow misinterpreted my proposal and, uncharacteristically, had not even contacted me for clarification. 

To top it all off, daily reports about the pandemic presented a negative and depressing outlook for many businesses as well as the world in general. I felt dragged down by these reports and by my business situation, and I did not look forward to going to my office in the days that followed.