Today's Economy: What Myth Are You Stuck In?

In my work over the years with individuals as well as corporate leadership teams, I often bump into the same phenomenon: many of us seem to prefer living in our myths to living in our lives. The preference for myth to reality seems to get us in all kinds of trouble.

Two of the more common myths I encounter are the Myth of Control and Myth of Stability. These two are playing out in interesting ways as we struggle with one of today's big issues impacting many of us - the economy and what we can do about it.

Interestingly, control and stability are simply different versions of the same myth. Today, I want to focus on the control side of the equation.

The Economy with a big "E" is well beyond most of us to pretend like we know what to do, other than complain that it should be different.

The small "e" economy, however is something you and I can do something about. You may not like the choices, but choices are all we have. How you exercise those choices is going to make a huge difference going forward, primarily on how you experience the next couple of years.

If you are a control addict, then you may be spending a whole lot of energy worrying about the "loss of control" over what's going on around you.

Control Is an Illusion

Control is one of those seductive illusions most of us suffer in our daily lives. We like the illusion of control, because it makes us feel like we know what's going on and that we can direct its outcome. On the other hand, some people recognize that they no more control the economy than they do the weather or how others drive their cars.

Unfortunately, many of those who recognize their lack of control on the larger scale of life, fail to recognize and so relinquish the one level of control they do have. That is perhaps best summed up by the Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus: it's not what happens to you but how you respond that matters.

You can always control how you respond to what's going on. Sometimes, the level of response is limited as Viktor Frankl discovered as a concentration camp survivor in WWII. (If you don't know this story, read Man's Search for Meaning where he chronicles his life in the concentration camps. To paraphrase, we wrote that freedom is that point in time just after they do something to me and just before I choose my response to it.)

The current economic mess is a prime example of people focusing on what's happening to them and their apparent loss of control, when control isn't the real issue. If you can't control what's going on around you, what can you do?

As we find ourselves moving through this time of economic and social change, some will find the experience daunting and overwhelming. Those who do, may choose to contract inwardly, to pull back from the world, and abandon choices that might make a difference.

Others will put on a cheerful face and talk about making lemonade out of life's lemons.

Lemonade From Lemons

If you can work with the notion of lemonade from lemons, then you may discover choices you can make, choices that will help you deal with the challenges of these times in a way that will be expansive.

As the larger economy appears to be collapsing around us, it may be tempting to contract right along with it. However, others will find ways to expand in the face of that same apparent contraction.

I am being challenged as many of us are - I wound up losing my two long time clients last autumn, found a new client in December with the promise of at least 100 days of consulting for 2009, and then lost that client on the day everything was to start in mid-January.

What choices do I have? There are plenty of people to blame, tears to shed, etc. When all that is done, then what? Either I do something about my situation, or I do nothing. In either case, I will get to enjoy the fruits of my labor or suffer the lack thereof.

So what can you do as you are going through these difficult times?

You might enjoy reading a post that went up this weekend from Anne Naylor talking about job creation in the wake of the collapse of the British steel industry 30s years ago. The job creation story is a great one about displaced workers transforming empty industrial buildings into industrial villages of small businesses.

Thousands of new businesses and jobs were created. Help was provided in many ways, some by the industries that were closing down, some by governmental bodies assisting with start up support.

However, the primary lesson here is one of choice and expansion in the face of extremely difficult times. None of these impacted industrial workers could control the circumstances that lead to the collapse of their employers; however, each could do something about the impact of those changes. Each chose to find ways to improve their lot in life, to educate themselves in unfamiliar areas, and to take the initiative in shepherding themselves and their workmates into a new era.

My family went bankrupt three times as I was growing up, the last when my father died of leukemia and the insurance company refused to pay claiming that leukemia was a pre-existing condition when he took out the life and health policy 19 years earlier. I wound up living in my car for a while, subsisting on a dollar a day.

Turns out that was a blessing in disguise. I learned that I have what it takes to get through difficult times. I learned that I have to keep my focus on where I'm heading and make the choices necessary to get there. I also learned that no matter how bleak the circumstances, I was still OK inside myself.

Most importantly, I learned my quality of life is not driven by what happens to me, but my response to it.

Respond well!

***

You can find out more about Russell Bishop at http://www.lessonsinthekeyoflife.com. Contact Russell at: [e-mail]

The author of Lessons in the Key of Life, Russell is an Educational Psychologist, professional life coach and management consultant, based in Santa Barbara California.

Comments

[Jonahson]

Desperate situation need desperate measures. If you have to pay for your car and housing loan at the same time your kid is going to colledge knowing you will be retrenched at the end of the month what do you do? There are those who have savings for a rainy day for a situation like these perhaps with the retrenchment benefits may find breathing space to calmly consider the next move. Both situations are real only that the time limit to find the next job is different. Just when the pilot is about to land and finds that the landing gear does not work compare to knowing the landing gear has a problem just after take off.
Both will require solution. In the latter you can cut cost by reducing expenditures and long term commitments but in the former, even if you want to sell your car and buy a second hand one you don't have much time. At the end both will eventually find their own way out. Let water find its own level. We don't worry for each other's problem but we can encourage other to get going when the situation is tough. To give you solace we are all in the same predicament, not just the US, the whole World too. Some poor countries face this situation all the time.

[Choicelady]

The issue of the post-collapse (NOT an inevitable occurrence - it was a choice of capitalists to bug out and leave workers behind) rests on something we must promote - worker ownership and control over businesses. We need tax codes that let them acquire abandoned businesses and either run them (they are often profitable, just not obscenely so) or converted as the British steel workers did. The foundation of any nation's wealth (as opposed to temporary riches for the voracious few) is always the productive knowledge and capacity of its workforce. It should be unleashed, and an entirely Third Way brought to the fore - worker owners/managers who know how businesses run and run them well. To wit - the most profitable airline today is Southwest - worker owned and managed. That ought to tell us quite a lot that we need to emphasize for pulling ourselves out of this mess. Capitalists are a fiction save for smaller business - it's the people who have skill and knowledge who ought to be in the forefront. Let's make it easier to do.

[guruglenn]

Because everything is a matter of perspective, how we chose to see a situation determines if it is bad or good or just is. Pareto's principle states that if there is 80 % of one there will be 20% of the other.

Does this indicate that twenty percent of the population will make lemonade while the other eighty percent leave the lemons rotting on the ground?

Our inner beliefs determine how we view our outer reality. I am inspired by "The Work" by Byron Katie which helps people change their negative subconscious beliefs to positive ones.

Join me in encouraging at least 80 percent of us to choose to make lemonade.

Glenn Smith Author of Lotus Petal, A Parable to Help You to Overcome The Fear of Death
http://lotuspetalbook.com

[cate58]

I agree that other doors can become open when one closes - and that a worker is not in control of their own job security. However, I wonder when examples are used that depict heavy industry (steel mill) jobs as replaced by "a village of small businesses". Steel mill jobs, dirty and dangerous they may be, but they came with significant hourly pay and benefits. Most small businesses fail within 3 years. Certainly the jobs created by small business often initially lack high salaries, full-time hours, and benefits. So, while some work is better than none, I'd prefer to have had you include real statistics about wage rates, numbers of people with benefits (it being England, I understand that health care benefits aren't needed), and number of jobs created in that community versus those lost. How many people had to re-locate to get a job? How long did the "retraining, education, etc." take before new employment in a new field occurred.

I'm a numbers person and while appreciate your sentiments and personal anecdotes, I prefer documented narratives.

[Anne Naylor - Huffpost Blogger]

cate58

If you (any one else reading this post) would be interested I can forward to you a document written in 1985 about the job creation programme for British Steel. This may give you some of the information you are seeking. Contact me at clearrestu­[e-mail] for this document.

I am planning to offer more information about the success of Job Creation Limited in subsequent posts. My own recall is that jobs did not take long to create. Unlike in America, people tend not to relocate. Great Britain is a much smaller land area. Communities did experience economic regeneration.

Thank you for your questions.
Anne

[Sunlituplands]

Good article. People believe in myths and call it reality. Our banking failure is analogous to playing Russian roulette. If you play long enough the odds are almost 100% fail. The previous successes provided misleading information from which a false pattern can be deduced. Saving our banking system is a chimera too. Let it go, forget the 'supply side' hyperbole. Concentrate on the demand side and success may follow: whereas saving this system will fail most assuredly.

[BillDue]

We all control what we want, what we do not want, what our boundaries are, and what our priorities are. These are things that are inside us all. However, few people take the time to actually discover these inner ingredients. Knowing these inner ingredients give us the confidence and control to respond the way we want to outside forces we do not control. Taking responsibility for our own inner ingredients gives us the control to use them. When we gain the true knowledge of these inner ingredients, and take the responsibility to understand and accept who we are, we will get control of our own actions.

Passing responsibility relinquishes any true control.

[Dr. Judith Rich - Huffpost Blogger]

Oops! I seem to be good at dropping letters from people's names. Russell........

[Dr. Judith Rich - Huffpost Blogger]

Hi Russel,

Good question! What myth are you stuck in? How about the myth... "not in this economy". That seems to be the most popular one I'm hearing these days. People tend to get small, think small, act small in tough times. We become like tortoises and pull back in our shells and hunker down til the storm blows over.

In the meantime, there's plenty of room to breath life into our dreams and take itsy bitsy steps to bolster our confidence and stoke the imagination. That's I've written about just down the block on my blog: Impossible To Inevitabe: Dare To Dream Big.

It might sound like I'm advising people to jump off a cliff or be a daredevil like Phillippe Petit, but it's all about the game we play with our minds.

I want to thank you, Russell, for giving me the opportunity to blog here. This was/is a big step that has helped to develop my writing and opened many new doors towards the realization of my dream. Come check out my post and see what that is!

Love and blessings to you,
Judith

[Fremon]

What does one do when myth is all they have lived by and all they have? Americans are the greatest myth producers and livers of all time. One aspect of business planning is when creating a plan in the business world most of the plan creators give all the reasons why it will succeed. To try an deal with a little more reality I recently read a concept that calls for the creating team or person to assume that after 5 years the plan fails and to provide the reasons that led to that failure. I wish I had this in mind when I was on team business and marketing planning. It would have avoided a lot of polyanna thinking and attendant negative results.

[Russell Bishop - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks, Fremon. Great observation about planning. I'm fond of what I call "nightmare" scenarios. After we have told ourselves how great everything could be, now spend some time thinking aboutg similar scenarios and how they got in trouble. What will we do if this turns out toe be the case this time? Another fun exercise is to take on the role of your competitor, imagining they had access to your internal planning and strategy thinking. Armed with this info, how would you, if you were in the shoes of your competitor, outsmart and outperform your own company. Estee Lauder did something like this 30 years ago creating a stealth team charged with inventing a strategy that would bury Estee Lauder. The result? They came up with Clinique! One of the more successful brands to emerge int he industry.

[new world daughter]

I enjoyed the article, and it is true that when times get tough, make lemonade out of the lemons being thrown your way. However I think this solution is perhaps only relevant to the middle and upper middle class. When the lemons become rotten lemons for the lower class, what do they do then? When you have less resources to pool from (i.e. perhaps an inadequate education) How can you produce lemonade from rotten lemons, or no lemons at all. So I think it's necessary to have the government help- however it has to be directed at the right group of people, and that is something to be mindful of in this sort of discourse.

[Anandas]

From the peanut gallery or the Lemonade Stand? I will take the lemonade stand
any time! Great article and much needed to stimulate the minds of many people
who are not yet at the point of considering these ideas, but should!

[Jonahson]

Why do you think Mexicans come to the US to look for jobs? During the downtime of 1996/97 which mostly affected South East Asian countries as well as South Korea, many naturalized Chinese living in these countries couldn't get jobs so they went to other countries including the US and Canada to look for jobs. One of the popular destination being Japan, in this country the pay is good because of the higher foreign exchange rate but the living conditions and food are expensive. A number of people often cramp into a small room and eating only instant noodles so that they have money to send home. After the downturn these people returned to a home, bought cars and used the money the saved to start a bussiness.
During bad times change to a lower pay job if you need to, maybe change jobs to one that require less skill. Perhaps do two jobs instead. Or worse come to worse, go to other states or countries to find for job. Your fore fathers are all immigrants, they came to US to make a better living because back home they faced similar problems. They would kick your butts if they see you now waiting for government handouts. Taking care of the big E would be the government's job but you can take care of your small e. I believe this is the message Russell is trying to impart.

[DubiousAtBest]

Now everybody just "think positive" and everything will be great!

Oh yeah, and click your heels three times too...

[Russell Bishop - Huffpost Blogger]

Hey there Dubious! Skepticism is great, especially if you use it to test, to learn and to educate. You might try reading this book: "It's Not What Happens To You, It's What You Do About It" by W. Mitchell.

He first wound being burned beyond recognition, losing most of his face, fingers, etc. Once recovered, he then wound up becoming paralyzed. As he says of his condtion: "Before I was paralyzed there were 10,000 things I could do. Now there are 9,000. I can either dwell on the 1,000 I've lost or focus on the 9,000 I have left." - http://www.wmitchell.com/

There's a difference between postiive thinking and positive action. Correct positive thinking is to recognize what is and then make choices about it in service to a positive outcome. If we don't have a positive outcome we are heading toward, how do we ever move beyond whining, complaining and blaming?

Hope you can find the usefullness in these thoughts.

[belinda65]

Thank you, dubious at best. You at least have the courage to keep it real- as opposed to the: "take two jobs, take three jobs.." advice givers. Think four $5-an-hour jobs instead of one 80K-a- year IT position is going keep you in your house and your children fed and in pre-school? No- but may be a heart attack.
Thank you also to the comment writer who demanded numbers instead of maudlin reassurances to make lemonade form lemons.
When impacted by an unprecedented existential crisis, temporary despondence is....take a deep breath...NORMAL and sometimes NECESSARY to reassess the status quo.
It takes more courage to admit that dealing with setbacks requires its natural period of adjustment- mourning- even inward contraction and an unusual slump in activity, than to spread a fake cheer.
Yes, I've heard the mantra of The Secret- it's found all over the pseudo psychology section of bookstores: "Your negative thoughts will incur negative actions and negative consequences." What crap! Any realistic, intelligent person who is not clinically depressed knows that after a period of mourning comes a period of hope - it will return- without the need for fake cheerleading at the inappropriate time that babbles on and on: "Keep believing anything is possible- NOW!!!"
But of course, nothing could be easier or more profitable - especialy for so called "life coaches"- than to give vague, new-agey pep talk when individual circumstances demand individual, concrete advice.

[Jonahson]

Fortune cookie, " When the horse dies, a cow will do. When the cow dies a donkey will do and if the donkey dies, well, you walk if you have to. "

[yappnmutt]

your mind is a wonderful discovery. it makes you do whatever you want it to.