We walked away from £60,000 and, in the end, it was easy

I never thought I'd say that...

Common sense is brilliant, it provides direction, its logical, it's intuitive, it's just completely and obviously the right course of action. 

Although it's not, it's not even close, in fact it catches fire like a scouser sat by a burned out car wearing a shell suit the second it meets experience. 

We all give advice based on common sense all the time. We want to have a say in the conversation, to be seen as the go to person so we form hypothesis and pass it off as fact to add validity. Well I do anyway. 

If I'd have used common sense over the last 10 weeks I'd not be going anywhere and I'd be a stressed out lump of resentment about now. 

10 weeks ago Christina and I set our course for Denmark. We listed what needed to happen in order to make the move possible. We set out what was important to us. Our clients, our staff, our friends, our family. What would integrity look like in handling this process. What would we, and what would we not accept. 

Let me tell you, selling a business is hard. You very quickly open up your world to people that would rival the worst person you know on their worst day. 

Money quickly corrupts small insecure men and the potential of easy money shines a light on those that were hidden by their poverty. It doesn't change a person, it just makes them more of what they already are. 

We walked away from 60k but kept our values in tact. We got screwed out of 40k by a man who was just jaded by his job and looking to escape. We've been called liars and cheats and had our business pulled apart in the name of winning a discount - like a belittling partner. 

But all of it, in the end, was just distraction. 

Meaningless nonsense, stuff sent to pull us off our course. In the long run, from a birds eye view, just noise. Stuff that would have led us away from our objective or sat holding our 'precious' but without anything else we hold as important to us. 

Life doesn't just ask you to say what's important to you. It try's you and tests you and forces you to prove it in way you hadn't even imagined. It does this most acutely when you have set your sights on something that really matters to you. 

Walking through it can feel like pure darkness but the other side. You're not just happier, not just in a better place than the one you were aiming for. 

You're a different person. You don't just say, "fall down 9 times get up 10" like a stupid facebook meme sent to inspire. You've lived it. And you're no longer afraid of the next punch in the face, it's afraid of you. 

Ed Ley