The current whispers of economic recovery may entice the small business owner, or an entrepreneur within a larger company, to rest their fate in the changing winds of the external world. Somehow, someone or something out there is going to bring success.

There is a tendency to cling to the market that was. A time when money was plentiful, property values were high and size meant security in our financial institutions. A time when we believed we could rely on government to cure the ills that the free market economy was unable to cure on its own.

The reality is, however, that neither external conditions nor clinging to markets of the past will be able to fuel the engine for personal and economic recovery. It will likely be far more productive to heed the words of Deepak Chopra when he suggests we take control by “putting our attention on our intention.”

To take inventory and use the resources available to each of us, apart from money, will give us the encouragement and opportunity to position ourselves for economic recovery. 

In our capitalistic society it is often believed that the only fuel to feed the engine of economic recovery is money. In fact, when money is in short supply is exactly the time to use alternative resources such as energy, creativity, ingenuity and community to position yourself and your company for recovery.

Energy in the form of more hours committed to the job and greater efficiency will yield satisfaction in daily activity and longer-term productivity. A friend once shared with me his simple, but successful, business plan: We outwork the competition.

Creativity is a key resource in difficult times. We all know if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, yet in these times everything seems broke and all needs fixing. Since our once trusted financial and political leaders are lacking, there is a vacuum waiting to be filled with new ideas and methods.

Ingenuity is a resource seeming almost native to America and has given birth to the industrial revolution, agricultural abundance and an incomprehensible world of expanding technology. Capital by itself would never have achieved such accomplishments.

Community also provides the opportunity to share knowledge, experience and education with one another when expanding productivity or creating greater efficiency.

Communication with your clients and customers can be a resource of direct information on the product or service they are seeking in a society that is changing daily.

With a thorough personal evaluation you will find in your own day, your own company and your own sphere all the resources to generate a new attitude and new energy needed to take control of your own economic recovery. As we individually design our emergence from this economy, it is our moment to prove that capital is only one of the resources of capitalism.

In the closing line of “The World is Flat,” Thomas Friedman defines the generation fated to meet this challenge. He states this group to be “the generation of strategic optimists, the generation with more dreams than memories, the generation that wakes up each morning and not only imagines that things can be better but also acts on that imagination every day.”

Charles Bogue is a real estate broker in Napa. He can be reached at 486-5511 or e-mail: cbnapa@napanet.net.