The impaired global economy and the economic recession are in the news and in the minds of many. 

As a psychologist, I’m one who tends to carry this around & ponder its impact on the individual.  How do these hard times affect us as humans?  Are there ways to remain abundance-focused, even when the external world is giving us signals to do otherwise?  Does becoming abundant-focused amount to denial or increased awareness?  Could it be the best course of action, both for the individual and for society, to remain focused upon the abundance that already exists?  How is it that some people are so affected by what goes on in the news, and others can go through life unaffected?  How is it that some people are able to prosper more in economic hard times?

As I’ve considered these questions, I’ve decided that I would challenge myself to learn to retain and even enhance my own abundance-consciousness.  I suppose this is coming from a growing wonder in my mind about what we’re each capable of manifesting.  When my book hit #1 national bestseller, which I knew would take a miracle, my perspective shifted.  It gave me pause to consider the power of creation we each have.  So, I started to shift into thinking that perhaps, even in the midst of the news of external problems, we could each continue to learn, grow, contribute and thrive–if that was the intention.

As a part of this growth, I recently noticed myself finding more ways to nurture myself.  I have increased my meditation to include different formats and have opened my awareness as a result.

I know that health as a woman depends upon self-pampering and nurturing the self–not just others (which moms like me tend to do too much).  Today, for example, I decided to pamper myself by doing something I’d always wanted to do for myself–I went and got my wavy hair straightened at a nice salon near my home.  I chatted with the hair-dresser, continuing my thinking about the matter of the recession on individual mentality.

“Have you guys noticed the impact of the recession in your business?” I asked curiously.

“Well, our hair colorists have had less profits this year, but our hair stylists are at the same profit level,” he replied, “which really isn’t good because usually we need to improve about 10% a year in order to keep up with price increases in the products.  So, yes, there are some signs of it in our business.”

“Have you had layoffs as a result?”

“Not really any substantial changes at this point in that area, but it affects us all.”

I shared that I have a friend, Ellen, who made a pretty profound comment in our recent training teleseminar.  She said, “There’s just as much money out there as there always has been.  It is important that we remember that.  It is still out there and it is still available that people can succeed in hard times.” 

I consider what is going on in the economy and I return to the innate capacity that we possess to turn inward for answers.  We can do this so easily when things are going well.  How is it that we sometimes forget to do this when things are uncertain and not going as well as we’d hoped?  At those times we look around, read the upsetting news, listen to it again on the radio, watch it again on the tv and buy into it without question.  We stop asking ourselves the questions about the information & the how much of the truth it represents.

I think we turn outward for certainty when we are fearful & get forgetful of our internal power as we adopt an external approach to life.  An example of this is a friend who became a compulsive neat freak after her father abandoned her and her mom.  Somehow, keeping everything tidy was a way to prove to herself that life was okay.  Her outer world was okay, so therefore she concluded that everything was okay.  How many of us are adopting this childlike approach in our adult lives?  Can an immature externalized approach solve the mature internal questions we have about uncertainty?

It is normal for us to have a strong desire for order and certainty, but it is not healthy for us to allow this desire to become a demand, or to resort to externalized pretend-coping responses over the long term.  Once we say that we must have order and certainty, we begin to feel depressed and panicky when these are not forthcoming.  These unhappy feelings can lead to maladaptive behaviors to get rid of the pain.  So, we make ourselves mentally unhealthy by demanding that things must be a certain way. 

We can also help ourselves toward mental health by recognizing that we can strongly prefer for things to be a certain way, and we can cope with them being yet another way than our first choice. 

When it comes to the recession, we can even learn to discover that what is being understood by us in our fear isn’t the whole truth.  It is part of the truth.  When we are thinking that things are bleak and grim, this is only a part of the truth–where there is darkness on one side of the world, there is light on the other.  So, it is natural for problems to have benefits on their other side. 

Even now, I suspect that there is more to the recession story than meets the eye.  There are folks who are making money off of the recession–folks who are capitalizing on the business opportunities it presents–yes economic opportunities exist, believe it or not.  There are also personal improvement opportunities.  There are other folks who are using this time to rediscover things about themselves that they didn’t know.  Some are using it to grow and learn about self-mastery, despite the fact that everyone outside of them is showing them reasons that they can feel stressed out.

The folks who are benefitting are the ones who know how to turn inward for clarity and for answers, how to live with intention and how to retain their sense of human integrity despite emotional shifts.  These are key tools–at this point, I still believe Inner Guidance is the most cruicial of them all–because it leads to them all. 

Here are the questions I’d suggest you begin to ask yourself to harness your inner guidance, especially if you are facing job loss or excessive strain due to the recession:

1. What is there to learn during this time?
2. What can I do to grow during this time?
3. How can I benefit from this time?
4. Who do I know who can help?

Please comment on this blog if you have a moment.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Pam

P.S.–You know the training teleseminar I mentioned before?  Well, Ellen and I are doing 3 more of these before our big workshop in April.  So, you actually ought to go sign up for the details now while there’s still room:  http://www.myinsourcing.com/PamGarcyWorkshop.htm

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 12:48 am and is filed under Default. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.