25 January 2011
Lessons of the Great Recession
Posted by Intuitive Coach under: Coaching Tools; Current Events; Goal Setting .
It’s only three weeks into the New Year and it already feels like 2011 is going to be waaaay better than last year. More people are finding jobs, fewer people are filing for unemployment, foreclosures are down, more homes are selling for more money than they did a year ago, more businesses are reporting higher earnings, and fewer businesses seem to be going under.
These are all good signs that the Great Recession is, well, receding and that perhaps the worst of those troubling economic times are now behind us. What lessons have we learned?
As a business coach, my job is to help my clients not only manage their present circumstances but also keep them focused on their future and how they will create the life they envision living. In order to do that properly, however, they must incorporate lessons they’ve learned in the past. This requires a focused willingness to honestly assess what you’ve said and done to get where you are.
Over the years, I’ve discovered that most people need guidance with this process. Sometimes it’s not so easy to peer inside yourself and put light on all the thoughts, beliefs or actions that ultimately form the fabric of Who you are. It may feel like some of that old stuff is better kept underground, but it’s also possible that some of it might be worthy of closer examination. Remember that thousands of years ago Socrates famously said “the unexamined life is not worth living” which may sound extreme but his words still resonate all these years later.
The trick is to do it without getting stuck in self-loathing or relentless negativity.
I’m just now putting the finishing touches on an e-book I’ve written called Release and Catch, which is essentially a practical exercise to help let go of the past and attract, or catch, the future of your dreams. It works well in both a group setting and on an individual basis. As soon as it’s ready, you’ll be among the first to know.
It’s critically important that we as individuals and as a nation take the time to reflect upon and learn from our past so we can create the best possible future. Even though the Great Recession has forever altered the way we live and work today, there is much that can be learned from it. In fact even at this moment we are still learning from it.
One of my clients speaks of enduring her own “personal tsunami” when she was let go from her job as a food server in a high-end restaurant where she’d worked more than two decades. She slogged through anger and grief, did some deep soul-searching and decided to enter a two-year course of study to become a massage/bodywork therapist. Within a few months she will be fully licensed and will have reinvented herself in a way she could never have imagined before the Recession hit.
What I know for sure is that we can’t go back to the way it was before. We can only participate in creating the new normal from here on.
So then, what lessons have you learned from the Great Recession?
