Charting Your Course Through Troubled Waters - Part 1

It is obvious that the economic crisis isn't going away and that we are probably going to be living under less than optimal circumstances for at least the foreseeable near term future. So what do you do to make it through this? I laid out some basic principles last month. But as:

1. I've seen in my own business and with the lives of my children that the need for constant reappraisal and adjustment of action and,
2. I've lived through numerous of these and,
3. I do crisis management for a living

I'm going to keep a flow of information related to how one can deal with the current environment.

This post will deal with "Don't Be A Victim".

So your job is at risk. Your savings are depleting. Everything you've worked for is threatened. What are you going to do? Are you going moan about you're fate? Lose sleep worrying? Go into general depression about FAILURE?

The answer if you are normal is probably - yes I'm going to all those things. And you know what, it's OK. It's OK to be miserable, depressed, angry, scared, frustrated, etc...for a while. Depending on how you're coming into this (a sudden event like losing your job, or a gradual realization that things are deteriorating) this can be a few days or a few weeks.

But then you have to determine - what am I going to do. How am I going to make it through this (which I will talk about in a later post). What you can't do is give up, be a victim. There are all kinds of studies of prisoners of war and concentration camp victims that show that those with the will to survive are those most likely to.

Most of us are not complete Stoics, capable of taking an emotional hit to our chin and not reacting. A good wallow of self-pity is a pretty realistic reaction to a crappy event. But don't let it be the guiding light. Let it be a fling. Then let it go and get on to the process of figuring out just what it is you're going to do.