WYBIWYG: What You Believe Is What You Get

I knew the world was in danger the last time I visited Meg's delicatessen in town. It was back last Summer and we popped in for something nice to eat one afternoon.

There were only a handful of customers and Meg didn't look too busy. When we asked how things were, her reply was, "It's very quiet. I think it's this credit crunch. Everyone's in the same boat."

Now Meg is absolutely brilliant at what she does. You can't get better strawberry tarts this side of the Border. Her place is spotless, cheerful, and well-priced. But Meg is no financial analyst.

That's when I knew she'd been infected.

As more bad news pours out of our newspapers and TV screens, I was reminded of Meg this week. And of this story from Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian author of the best-selling novel, "The Alchemist". Here it is...

A man was selling oranges in the street. He was illiterate and so never read the newspapers. He merely put out a few signs along the road and spent the day proclaiming the excellence of his merchandise.

Everyone bought from him, and the man prospered. He invested the money he earned in more signs and went on to sell more fruit. Business was booming when he had a visit from his son, who had been educated and had studied in the big city. "Brazil is in desperate straits, Pa. The economy's going into a terrible recession."

Worried, the man reduced the number of signs and started selling inferior oranges because they were cheaper. Very soon, customers who had enjoyed the better oranges deserted him and sales plummeted.

"My son's right," he thought. "These are indeed difficult times."

That story has been in Volume 2 of our series of "Stories that Coach" for as long as I can remember but it could have been written in just the last year.

Sometimes the world gets infected with a strange collective virus and then sleepwalks into nightmare scenarios of its own making.

It's time to wake up from the nightmare. It's time for a collective return to a belief in our ability to creatively deal with anything thrown at us. It's time to stop believing in the doomsayers.

It's time to believe in ourselves again!