“I blame it on the Recession” – the trendiest excuse

The Recession, the big crisis, the major crunch, the huge depression, the financial Armageddon… Headline after headline, media seems to have us all in its spell these days. It’s pumping fear day and night. Everywhere I turn, we’re constantly being bombarded with such alarming news. Huge threats, and no solution. Nothing for me to do, no way I can influence things. The obvious question for each of us is “what am I supposed to do? How is this going to affect ME,____?(your name here)” Well, a good answer would be: Any way you let it to. Of course you cannot stop the waves, but you can learn to swim, right? In such an economic environment though, too many people feel downright paralyzed. They feel like victims, totally helpless in front of this huge unstoppable tsunami. Options seem fewer and thinner, the unavoidable gets closer and closer, the ax shines in the moon light and the front door is open…tah tah tah tah…(horror movie soundtrack).While it’s good to be informed, it’s definitely counterproductive to be obsessed and a subject of the mass hypnosis – be exposed long enough and you’ll just end up falling in line with the rest.

What it also helps a lot is to be aware of the market’s psychology and to avoid assimilating it and then turning it into your own. Stock market is driven by psychology. Real estate, even land value is impacted by psychology. Think about it. An acre of land is an acre of land. I happen to know a plot nearby whose selling value tripled (!) over the last two years. Nothing was built on it or near it, it gained no added value of itself whatsoever, it just followed the market upwards tendency in pricing, inflating its selling price artificially. The fact is, not only realities are more subjective then we think, they are often created by our own perception, which more often than not gets shaped under media’s thumb (or middle finger). The beliefs we have regarding a particular situation make us (re)act in a certain way, which may cause the very situation we wanted to avoid to become real. You think your husband is cheating on you, which makes you become colder and unpleasant, which makes the two of you drift apart, which makes your husband cheat on you. Or you believe the economy is shaky and you decide to withdraw your savings from the bank and keep them in your mattress account (at least the customer service here is nicer), which makes the bank have less funds, which leads to a weaker bank and a weaker economy. We are actually feeding, with our actions, the very beast we say we’d like to kill. Self-fulfilling prophecy, law of attraction, whatever you call it, this is how it works.

But when the threat seems so serious, and so big (worldwide, you know?), the feeling of helplessness holds you stuck in place, this time with such a good excuse for not succeeding, that it seems impossible to have any other outcome. As somebody told me recently: “this thing, I mean the recession and all, that’s big, I mean, like… big. I feel that I cannot fight that, it’s too big for me, it’s like I’m facing a train coming straight towards me, you know? Just too big to fight it.” Then you may want to consider getting the hell out of the railway! I said, not as lady-like as I wished I had. Oy!

Although at a macro level it seems that the problem lays in having insufficient resources, at a purely individual level, the game is never won or lost because of a lack of resources. There are always more resources available to us then we care to look for. What wins or loses the game it’s the mindset you choose to have, the decisions you make under the circumstances and the determination to pursue the goals you set for yourself. There’s never just one and only way to attain your goals or be successful. If a job is lost, find another source (or more) of income. If a place changed (for the worse), change the part you were playing in it or change the place. If a door is closed, go knock on the window. (Then leave, there’s no point being a fool about it.) If you come across a roadblock, don’t turn around and go back, eventually telling everybody you meet on your way that you saw signs the end is near. Go left, or go right, or come back with a couple of friends, or a bigger car, or a maybe a ladder, but then you’ll have to walk… You got the idea. Get creative. Not blamative (I want to have rights on this word, it’s brand new!). Never give up. If you feel stuck, change the direction, reshape your business, your methods, your set of skills, your approach. But most importantly, make sure your mindset is not your worst enemy.

It’s NOT only about the cards you were dealt. Given the same financial resources and being placed in the same economic environment, different people can get extremely different results. Some lay flat and wait for the train to run them over, some decide what they want and go get it, no matter the obstacles they come across. Some die, some thrive, regardless. What’s your strategy? Dead guy, turtle or tiger? 

The questions to ask yourself are not “why me?” or “why now?”.Why not you? And why not now? Look for ways around it or over it, not for excuses to stay down. The most important question to ask yourself is “How do I get over this?” Emphasis on “how“. It’s the best key to getting un-stuck I know. Creativity is one of your most valuable resources and another one the bank cannot take away from us. Can you believe our luck?

I firmly believe that circumstances, although they can have an undeniable effect upon us, they do not control us. They can slow you down, but they cannot stop you. Regardless of what’s going on around you, you can move, change, adjust, grow and succeed. You’re the only one calling the shots, and the only one to decide if you are going to keep going, no matter want, or if you are going to find yet another thing to blame for whatever situation you’re not happy with.

We construct our lives on 2 sets of circumstances: the controllable and the not (apparently) controllable ones. So, as achievers, we tend to fall into one of the two categories:

• the ones who focus on creating the desired results by influencing the controllable (I work upon my beliefs, my habits, my actions, my abilities etc.)
• the ones who leave the outcomes mostly to chance, drift aimlessly and blame any undesired result on external factors and uncontrollable events, thus taking the least possible responsibility for the results (it rained, the market was saturated, the other guy was taller and so on).

I cannot underline enough the fact that you were not born one way or the other. It is a choice. You can choose to succeed, no matter how long or sinuous the road might be, to succeed in spite of it all. Or you can spend your life making sure you have an excuse at hand and something or somebody to blame for whatever you didn’t get.

So, I heard there’s a recession going on. I’ve decided not to participate.

Tags: goals, recession, results