I think all small business owners–in every country around the world–would agree:  2020 has not been an easy year.  The list of challenges is so long and so well known that I don’t even feel like going into them here. 

There is one silver lining out of this, although it does not come easily.  It is the forced hard look at what you really want. It focuses your thinking, brings things into sharp clarity and demands you face whatever you might have tried to ignore before. 

Maybe you even stand back and look at a business and wonder, “Do I even want to do this anymore?”

After this many months of fighting against a pandemic and its necessary restrictions, this type of questioning doesn’t seem so terrible now. It doesn’t feel so much like “giving up”; it seems more like a rational, open-ended pondering.  It leads to a question most small business owners are likely too busy to ever stop to dwell on: “What do I want to do?”

It doesn’t mean that we will all choose to leave what we’ve invested so much energy and effort. 

No, the silver lining is simply feeling a bit of freedom to consider all options.