Economy Victims or Victors?
by Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver
This article appears in the January edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold
Economy Victims or Victors?
We’re at the start of a fresh new year, but most of us are still covered with dust from the implosion of financial and commercial institutions we thought we could count on. Maybe it was your mortgage lender. Maybe it was your bank. Maybe it was the company you used to work for. It would be hard to find an American who has not been affected by the violent convulsions of the economy in 2008.
All that makes it easy to feel like a victim, personally and as a society. The economy has done us in. That’s a treacherous path to choose though and it leaves us far short of what we could be getting out of this. This is the furnace from which the steel of our characters can be forged—but not if we simper like a bunch of scared little bunnies and hide under the bed.
Yes, this is hard. And mean. And full of painful choices and real hardships. But no, there is absolutely no truth to the idea that “I shouldn’t have to be dealing with it.”
A real life has ups AND downs. The notion that you can proceed from cradle to grave without ever having to experience discomfort is ludicrous. Let go of the Madison Avenue mantra that your life should be perfect and get on with dealing with what’s on your plate. Even if it sucks.
The benefit of this kind of upheaval is in what you learn you can do that you would never have had to attempt in easier times. Maybe it’s taking in a boarder. Maybe it’s becoming a boarder. Maybe it’s accepting that the dream home has become a nightmare that you have to let go of forever. If you deal with these realities with all the brainpower and willpower you have, your successes will amaze you.
There’s an additional benefit that you won’t see until the rubble from this mess is gone and new horizons bring easier paths again. When you deal with hard things, you gain confidence for dealing with everything else. You acquire a standard of comparison that makes the rest of what life throws at you look really easy. Realizing “If I can do this, I can do anything!” gives you the confidence to do much more with your life.
A second benefit, if you choose to claim it, is an enhanced ability to solve problems effectively. These kinds of situations demand new thinking. “Usual” solutions simply don’t work. That means the typical approach to solving a problem–grab the first thing that looks like it will work and apply it without further evaluation—is out the window. Developing your ability to generate unique options and go in a well-thought, fresh direction will make your problem solving more effective for the rest of your life.
A third way to win from all this is in using it to change how you set your priorities. “Buying mode” is quite often a matter of automatic pilot and following the crowd. You can’t afford that if you job just evaporated—or might. Getting real about what’s genuinely important for you is not only possible but essential in this kind of economic environment.
That sets in motion an even better set of benefits. This “correction” gives you the chance to make your own correction. So many of us work in jobs we hate and live lives that are marginally satisfying because “I need the paycheck.” If it gets yanked away because of all that’s gone wrong in the economy, you get a do-over. Cool. Scary but cool.
Your “new life” may involve a massive redirect in career, living arrangements, priorities, commitments, and community involvement. But it will be more you—and more satisfying. You’d never have attempted it if you’d been able to keep the comfort of what you had going.
Yes, this economy has made us “victims” if we want to claim that status. But that’s wasting a golden opportunity. We can become stronger, wiser, and happier by using what’s going on now to reclaim who we really are and to get back to living according to our own truths and needs. Those kinds of gifts don’t come along very often.
Mary Lloyd is author of Bold Retirement: Mining Your Own Silver for a Rich Life and the large-page format workbook, Planning Tools for Bold Retirement and creator of Living Silver a one-day seminar on non-financial retirement planning. Her next book is about “work after work” She’s available as a speaker and for seminars. Her website is www.mining-silver.com. She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.