We will be soon be publishing Positive Health PH Online Dec 2010 Issue 177; that is some 16 years after the start of PH magazine, except that PH is now online only. We ceased publishing the print magazine after Issue 150, in Autumn 2008, when the confluence of the economic meltdown occurred with the cessation of availability of our own funds and credit. This also occurred during the period when we were mired in the process of selling our house in Portsmouth, with the object of downsizing and moving to Kent, to be closer to my partner's children and grandchildren. Had we been able to move in the spring or summer of 2008, we would have paid off many of our debts and been able to move house.
However, the chain kept collapsing and the person whose home we had planned to buy went bankrupt, Northern Rock and Leymann Brothers went bust and we ceased the print magazine, moving to PH Online, which was owned by another company. We still had our debts; however the entire archive of PH from the past 15-16 years was online, so we set about to focus upon making PH Online more dynamic and capable of promoting courses, practitioners and products in more dynamic and animated formats than possible on the printed page.
At the end of 2008, our original purchaser had managed to sell her house and made another offer to buy our property, except for £30k less. Having only about 1 week to make a decision which epitomized the expression "between a rock and a hard place", we decided to sell, and because there was no time to arrange a mortgage and complete another sale, we decided to rent and then move, not realizing that not being the super-A credit worthy individual of the past, that with our remaining debts, we would not likely be able to buy another property for perhaps years, perhaps never.
In these days of deficits, budgetary restrictions, administration and bankruptcy, it is fascinating to hear and read about corporate giants with astronomical debts re-structuring their debts; for a tiny business like ours, banks don't even want to extend the overdraft by several thousand pounds. Large publishing empires of famous magazines such as Newsweek sell and merge for the price of $1 with owners of online news websites such as Dirty Beast. When I approached a well-known American author and publisher about our plans to expand into the USA, he told me that publishing his many magazines over decades had almost bankrupted him. He advised me to emulate websites which sell products.
PH Online has upgraded its website to enable advertisements to promote courses, practitioners and products in numerous countries to have their own platforms in their own country. The huge website is also in the process of a major re-design which will enable advertisers to place their own adverts and update their copy. All that has to occur now is to arrange partnerships in different countries to sell advertising and arrange the promotional editorial.
So to the ultimate test of the title of this blog - Do Thoughts Help to Create our Reality? My partner is very confident; however I am worried that our money (from the sale of our house) will run out and we will be left high and dry. We both work to make this a reality, but what part will our thoughts and core beliefs play in the outcome? Real life is scarier than fiction.
