Have you noticed the growing fear and panic about the current financial situation that seems to be spreading across the globe? Have you found yourself caught up in the fear and panic yourself? I know I have from time to time.
Fortunately, there are some things you and I can do that will help us through the coming months of up, down, and sideways. This is the first in a series of posts that will offer some thoughts on how you can ride out the current storm and find an internal state of well being amidst the turbulence.
This will take some effort on your part, and especially so if you are one of those who tends to find the glass half empty. I will be tying this advice to work I have previously posted, most especially the piece on Symbols vs. Experience and the one on What If?
Please forgive the blunt approach here - my premise is that your experience of well being has nothing to do with what is happening around you. And it doesn't matter how you have been impacted by the current financial situation, right up to perhaps having lost a job, a house, and virtually all of your worldly possessions.
In simple terms: it doesn't matter what happens to you, as much as it matters how you respond.
I know of which I speak, so allow me a bit of a shaggy dog story to provide some context.
By the time I was 18, my family had gone through bankruptcy twice - not that we had all that much to start with - just a 1200 square foot house and a few modest furnishings. Ozzie and Harriet were definitely uptown from us. That disappeared as my Dad tried to transition from employee to small business owner. Great craftsman, lousy businessman.
I wound up working 40 hours a week through most of my high school years, first mowing lawns after school and on weekends, progressing through a stint flipping burgers at the local A&W Root Beer, and finally landing at Peninsula Music Center, selling records, guitars and sheet music. All that I earned went to supporting the family.
Perhaps surprisingly, I had a blast during this time. Sure, there was a lot of work and we had to find creative ways to feed the family on a buck or two a day. But heck, I didn't spend much time comparing our lot to the more fortunate families we knew. I just enjoyed busting my tail on those lawns and it was sheer heaven to wind up working for Chet and Betty Lane at the Music Center.
I wound up going to University of California at Davis, with a promise from my Dad that he would find the money to get me through. Well, that fell apart when he collapsed the first day of classes, wound up with leukemia, and died within six months of being diagnosed. Enter bankruptcy number three.
Back to working full time, this time in the school cafeterias. By the time I was a junior, things got a bit more complicated when I couldn't find housing I could afford, and wound up living in my car for a while. I literally lived on $1 a day.
The point of this little tale, is that I know a bit about getting through what some would call difficult times, and I would like to share some of these lessons with you over the next few weeks.
Let's start with fear.
Almost 30 years ago, Jack Canfield and I were teaching a seminar together and he taught me a very simple way to think about fear. It's an acronym for Fantasy Experiences Appearing Real.
Have you ever been scared by something that almost happened? Like standing on a corner, waiting to cross the street, when a car zooms by and almost hits you? Fear shows up and you can feel it in a very real way, right down to adrenalin coursing through the veins, stomach turning flips, and tension all over the place.
What qualifies this experience as a Fantasy Experience Appearing Real? Did you get hit? NO! Did you get scared anyway? YES? And why? Because you could have been hit, and might have been injured. Your brain was more than capable of supplying the scary thoughts with enough detail that your body reacted as though something actually happened.
And, even though "that was close," nothing actually happened. You might have been standing there in a perfectly serene state, and something that didn't actually hit you, was enough to yank you from serene to terrified.
Yesterday, I was teaching a class and after about 90 minutes, I asked everyone how they were feeling. The participants responded that things were good and that they were enjoying the class. I then asked them if they were aware of financial situation spreading across the globe. Of course everyone was. I then asked who had been impacted, and just about every hand went up. From there, it was pretty easy to point out that despite what the press is calling global panic, everyone here had been doing just fine - until they were reminded about the "crisis."
So, how do you go from "just fine" to "panic and crisis?" Well, that's the whole point. What if the only difference between "just fine" and "panic and crisis" is a question of focus and what you tell yourself? That's not to say that you may not have some financial hardships ahead of you, even present right now; it is to say that, in the paraphrased words of Viktor Frankl, "freedom is that point in time just after they do something to you, and just before you choose your response."
Even if something hit your bank account, or your home or your job, you can still find a place of well being. Stay tuned - more to come.
I'd love to hear from you. Please do leave a comment here or drop me an email at Russell (at) russellbishop.com.
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If you want more information on how you can apply this kind of reframing to your life and to your job, about a few simple steps that may wind up transforming your life, please download a free chapter from my book, Workarounds That Work. You'll be glad you did.
You can buy Workarounds That Work here.
Russell Bishop is an educational psychologist, author, executive coach and management consultant based in Santa Barbara, Calif. You can learn more about my work by visiting my website at www.RussellBishop.com. You can contact me by e-mail at Russell (at) russellbishop.com.
