Dearest Darling Friends,

I lost 12 crores in a business deal.
My net worth did not just drop. It went negative. Our kids were in school. The future I had built in my head quietly collapsed as if a deadly bomb had hit it.

Everything went dark.
The darkest thought was not about the money.
It was the feeling that I had let my family down.

Motivation had left the building.

There was no excitement.
No energy.
No inner voice cheering me forward.

People who talk about “staying hungry” and “keeping the fire alive” had clearly never sat in the kind of silence that follows a loss that size.

Motivation is a fair weather friend. It shows up when things are going well, when the wind is behind you, when the numbers make sense. But the moment the ground shifts — it is the first to leave.

And yet, I got up the next morning. And the one after that. And many more after that till we reached financial abundance again.

Not because I felt like it. It was because of six words my eldest daughter Jo, said to me.

“Popy, you are bigger than every setback that can possibly happen.”

She was a grown woman, looking her father in the eye, and choosing — deliberately, fully — to believe in him.
She knew exactly what we were facing. She was not offering the innocent comfort of a child who does not understand.

Her belief gave me back my own.

That is when I understood the difference between motivation and determination.

Motivation is a feeling. It comes and goes like the weather. One cannot build a life around something that disappears the moment you need it most.

Determination is a decision. You make it once. Then, you honour it every single day … especially on the days you do not feel like it.

Motivation asks, “Do I feel like doing this today?”
Determination says, “This has to be done. Period.”

The morning after that conversation, something had shifted inside me. Not the circumstances — me.

I stopped waiting to feel ready. I stopped waiting for the motivation to return. I was ‘determined’ that the setback would not be the defining chapter of my life, the bouncing back will!

What I have learned from this is this!

The biggest obstacles are not the market nor a difficult economy nor circumstances nor setbacks.
It is that version of you that is waiting to feel motivated ‘before taking action’.

The key is NOT motivation. It is DETERMINATION.

And if you are lucky — really lucky — someone who loves you will look you in the eye on your darkest day and remind you of who you actually are.

My daughter Jo did that for me.
It made me believe in myself and I have never forgotten it.

In life, if you ever face a block or a setback, when everything looks dark, when hope sounds like a lie, remember these words, “You are bigger than every setback that can possibly happen.”

Dont wait for motivation. Choose determination.