Good news and bad this week. First, a giant thank you to Kimmy at Bermuda CableVision. He came to my house this week, found that someone had borrowed (or stolen) my cable connection, and then fixed it. Having griped about this last week, a big vote of thanks is in order today.

Now the bad news.

The past couple of weeks have been a confusing time for me. One's fate is always somewhat out of one's own hands, and late in August it became plain that others had decided that my life should follow a new trajectory.

I tend to move like a snail trapped in treacle when it comes to dealing with unexpected news. In going through the five famous stages of reaction, I rarely bother with the middle ones. I go from a short period of denial, and a slightly longer one of anger, straight to acceptance, and then move on from there. I can't even remember what the other two intermediate states are.

Amidst the cacophony of voices advising me how to react, one sang loud and clear. It was a counterpoint to the chorus, because, on the face of it, the subject had nothing to do with my present difficulties.

The tone of this contrarian voice was gravely accusatory. Some years ago, it seems, I had been asked for, and had given, my general advice on a proposed financing venture. I can recall nothing whatsoever of the conversation, and would doubt it had even happened, except that the advice I had apparently given was so exactly the advice I would have given, that it must indeed have been true.

In short, a friend had asked whether he should borrow more than $1 million and invest it in Bermuda real estate. Knowing his income level to be low, and his desire to make the effort to increase it also to be low ? nothing wrong with that ? I apparently advised against. This was not formal, $500-an-hour advice, which I never give, merely friendly chat. I apparently said that it would be folly to become encumbered to that degree without any obvious means of ever becoming unencumbered. Since that is the very essence of what I would have said then, or would say now, we agreed for sake of the discussion that I had said it.

I was expecting a pat on the back. Instead, my friend accused me of destroying his economic well-being. If only he had borrowed that money, he said, he'd be on easy street now.

The snail in my brain slithered around furiously, trying to let my mouth say the right things that would not endanger our friendship, but which would accurately portray my thinking on the subject. I couldn't say: "Well, you would have dug a hole you could never dig yourself out of," even though it's true, because at that particular moment, it would have been inflammatory.

Borrowing the money might have been no problem. Bermuda banks are notoriously generous in lending on local real estate. I asked where my friend might have found the money that a lending institution would expect to be repaid. "That's not the point," said my buddy, who was then (and remains) already deeper in debt than prudence or common sense would dictate.

While I thought about how to answer that, he added: "So you and your advice have ruined my life." Then I knew what to say.

"If I advised you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" I asked. He said he would not. "Why not?" I asked. "Because it's bad advice," he replied. "Well, then," I said, "if you don't take bad advice, why did you take what you now think of as bad advice from me 12 years ago?"

A silence ensued, and I then asked: "If you didn't like my advice, why did you take it? And if you took it, but should not have done so, why are you blaming me? Don't you take responsibility for your actions?"

Oddly enough, I had that very day written a column for a US journal, in which I made mention of how my grandfather had taken what turned out to be very bad legal advice 50 years ago, which had somewhat impoverished my family. None of his descendants ever minded (with the possible exception of my father and uncle, who had to pay the bills that ensued). My grandfather made a decision and stuck to it, for better or for worse. As a man of honour, he would no sooner have blamed his advisors than his cat.

Having reached an impasse, our conversation veered onto other subjects. I don't doubt that my friend regards me as a Judas for having given him sage advice, when what he wanted was reckless goading. Bad as I felt for having innocently upset him, how much worse would I have felt had I advised the wrong thing and then watched as he ruined his life?

A couple of days later, the relevance of his past to my own present became plain. While my fate is indeed in the hands of others, I retain a degree of control over my own destiny. I voluntarily put myself in other peoples' control. Instead of acting as if a victim of their actions, I saw no choice but to seize the reins, the old , and do what I think best for me.

I don't know how it will work out, but I do know that, come what may, I won't blame (or credit) anyone other than myself. That insight was all I needed to shrug off the inactivity I had allowed myself to slump into (the denial and anger stages), and get on with my life. A new direction beckons as a consequence, and though the future is cloudy, I am at least nominally in charge of my destiny.

I'm deliberately obscuring the details here, because they don't matter. What matters is the big picture. If you approach your financial affairs with common sense and the understanding that, if you suck it up and get on with it, things will work out, a veil of fear will be lifted and you'll have a much less fraught time. That's easy to type, but hard to do. You learn to do it by doing it.

Never cast yourself as the victim of circumstance. The only thing we have to fear is not the ill will and jealousy of those who would do us down, but our own fear of failure and its cousin, the fear of success. Be not afraid, is my message this week. So far, I'm taking my own advice on that score. See if you can do the same. It's a little scary, but at least the sense of having a say in your own future improves your confidence level and, probably, the quality of the outcome.