by Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

With the current economic challenges, having a job is a big plus and keeping it is a must.   But sometimes, the wrong job can be even more emotionally destructive than having no job.   What do you do then?

Those of us who can at least see retirement on the horizon are legitimately even more skitterish.  When an older worker loses a job, it takes longer to find a new one.  Plus, once you are on the sidelines for a while, being older means being more vulnerable to losing confidence in yourself and letting go of work by default.  So we hunker down and keep the job we hate. 

We need to get smart about finding that next thing instead of remaining a victim of the lousy economy and horrid work situation.

The first step in a good job transition is knowing where you want to go.  If you need to find something else, be sure you are clear about why you need to change things.  Assuming that the reason work is bad is the boss or the company, when you hate that kind of work altogether is a ticket to a repeat of the job angst.  Take some time to think about what doesn’t work about this job and what’s behind that.  You may think your boss is the Ultimate Bossilla until you listen to what you friends and peers are saying about their bosses. 

Learn all you can about yourself so you have some certainty about what would be a great job for you.  Also be sure you’ve gotten to the actual core of why the current situation isn’t working.  If it’s just that the economy has slowed things down, planning an exit is a case of “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”  But if you have lost interest in the work you are now doing, maybe you need a new direction to get your mojo back.  Check this stuff out–and don’t just make a bunch of assumptions without getting real information.

The next step is to identify realistic options for working elsewhere.  Be forewarned, if you need to jump ship, you might end up starting a whole lot farther down the ladder with the new outfit.  This may be the best thing you ever did, but take the time to think about it.  Also think in terms of where you might be able to move within  your current company if it’s really a matter of bad boss or co-worker chemistry.   

This step has an unexpected and immediate benefit.  Sometimes when you take a close look at what else you could realistically do, the job you are doing becomes a whole lot more appealing.

Then figure out how to be really good at doing what you want to do next.  This may be by taking classes on your own.  It may be by talking with people who are already doing that kind of work.  It may be by applying yourself on your current job more diligently so that you develop skills needed for the next job.  As Thomas Edison said, “When opportunity arrives, many people miss it because it’s wearing overalls and looks like work.”  Do the work to get good enough to be valuable in the new arena. 

Build your network to include people with that interest and expertise.    Networking is not about collecting business cards from people you don’t know.  It’s about getting to know people–as friends–who are doing what you want to do.   You don’t have to like them personally or have the same politics to become good business buddies. 

The smartest thing anyone can do in a down economy is to be helpful in the business context.  If you see an article that someone else would appreciate, send them the link.  If you note a problem developing that a business friend needs to know about, give them the heads up (unless it involves a conflict of interest to do so).  Being kind is always in vogue, regardess of what the Wall Street stereotype is played like in the movies.

As a strategic capstone, keep doing your current job to the very best of your ability.  That is called integrity.  It doens’t make any difference if the whole rest of the world has lost it (which it hasn’t), operating to the best of your ability will keep you saner, happier, and more appealing as an employee–and a person

No matter how old you are, if you want to work, you can find work.  The best way to set yourself up so that you call the shots with that is to do what you love and be good at it.  So if your current job doesn’t give you that, you may need to change long term.  If you do, doing these things can make a big difference.

by Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

Right now, having a job is, in and of itself, a reason to be thankful. Very very thankful. But gratitude is one of those things that easily gets lost in the stress and bustle of actually doing the work and having a life simultaneously.  Try not to let that happen.  By happy about the work you do.

Why? 

Well, for starters, it’s just plain dumb to take a negative attitude toward anything.  There’s plenty of research to support the claim that thinking positively keeps you healthier.   It’s a better way to live.  Period.

But thinking positively about your job no matter what you’re doing on it is also an important part of your overall strategy for staying employed as long as you want to.  Being positive about your job means you will do it better.  And in this economy, the better performers are the ones to keep.  Better performers are the ones other employers snatch up if they do get laid off, too.  Grateful people are easier to work with and to have working for you.

So if you want to stay employed, put some effort into being positive and upbeat, even if  you do have a heavier work load than seems fair.  Even better:  Don’t start telling yourself it’s “not fair.” That kind of judgment is just negativity in a self-righteous wrapper.  It doesn’t make any difference what’s “fair.”  It’s your job.  For the time being, you want it, you need it, and you need to do what you can to keep it.

The cornerstone of that is being happy you have it.

I can hear your “yes but’s.”   The “You have no idea what I have to put up with” rebuttal seems so justified.  But it isn’t.   How awful the job is or isn’t is not the deciding factor in whether you can be grateful for it.  Deciding to grateful is.  Your attitude toward your job is 100% up to you.

There are offices who manage to do the impossible day after day because the people who work there believe in what they are doing and are happy to be doing it.  There are other offices with more flexibility, pay, and perks who are full of complainers and unmet business goals.  Which kind of place are you creating with your own attitude?  How much negativity are you buying in on without realizing it?

That’s another piece of this you need to pay attention to.  Getting sucked into a negative group mind set at work happens so automatically that you don’t even know it’s happened.  You just end up going home grumpy every day and start to dread the next one–unless it’s the weekend.

Work is never perfect and there will be days that don’t go at all well.  You can still be pleased and grateful you have the job.  You can still be cheerful.  You can still do your best to do the work as well as possible. 

Even if we don’t need money, we end up working at something.  It’s a basic part of being human.  If you are doing work as a job, make sure part of how you approach it is to be grateful.  It’s easier to hold a job when you have that attitude.  And easier to keep one.  Or find another. 

Work is good.  Be grateful.

by Mary Lloyd, CEO,Mining Silver
 
Norman Vincent Peale was promoting positive thinking way back in 1952.  Motivational speakers have been proselytizing about it for decades.  These days you’ll find it in “The Secret.”  But even with all that, our focus now is most often on the negatives—what to avoid, be afraid of, or worry about.  That’s not so good.  Negative thinking has some really nasty side effects. 
 
Take nutrition, for example.  We’re supposed to avoid trans fats.  And high fructose corn syrup.  And genetically altered food.  To get rid of free radicals and reduce our cholesterol.  We avoid red meat and bottled water and anything that came from Mexico—or is it Timbuktu this week?  Fresh greens are the road to certain death as is peanut butter—or whatever has been most recently found to have something nasty in it  SOMEWHERE. 
 
Be careful.  Be VERY careful.  Be afraid of what you might eat by accident. 
 
There’s so much more joy in eating gorgeous food that you meet raw and cook with love.  Beautiful food is good for you. How about doing that instead of trying to avoid what isn’t.
 
Food is just one arena.  There’s stuff to avoid in every facet of life.  Scams. Toxic personalities.  Sunshine–at least without sunscreen.  Binge shopping. Crow’s feet.  Traffic jams.  Weeds.  Spam.  Mean people. Burn out…  The list goes on and on and on.  Persuasive content these days is aimed at getting you to NOT have something happen, be it identity theft or erectile dysfunction.

We pay a huge price doing it this way.
 
Negative thinking puts you on alert:  There is danger–something that’s not good for you that you need to do something about.  Something to fear.  Something to worry about.  Your entire body stays on alert, waiting for further instructions on whether to fight the thing or run like hell.  These are other words for “stress.”  By worrying, we increase our odds of a heart attack, stroke, or some other health problem. 
 
Most of what we are afraid of isn’t even real.  It’s projections of a future that hasn’t happened—and probably won’t.  If you’re afraid of the pit bull that’s snarling at you, that’s smart and it’s time for action.  But being afraid of what you might eat is silly.
 
Trying to avoid all future risk is futile.  Why not enjoy what’s going on right now, instead?  Doing that increases your immune levels, reduces your stress, and, of course, makes life more fun moment to moment.
Being happy provides an energy boost that makes life easier.

So how can you be positive in this negative world? 
 
Choose it.  Consciously search for the positive in whatever you’re dealing with. 
 
Be grateful. When you acknowledge what you have, the wisdom to see that specific blessing links to an overall sense of wellbeing.
 
Ignore the naysayers.  Even if they are people you love and live with.  Imagine an invisible wall of positive energy between you and that toxic thinking, keeping you from falling prey to the worry and woe.

Yes, it’s easy to get caught up in the negatives.   Try not to.  The benefits of being happy far outweigh this unachievable effort to be 100% safe.  As long as you’re alive, there will be risks.  They will be no greater if you choose to be happy–and may actually be far less.  Regardless, life is sweeter when you see the pluses—and there always are some.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO. Mining Silver

There’s an old story about a farmer in South Africa who sold his farm so he could become a diamond prospector. He never did find his mother load. But the guy who bought the farm, who was paying more attention to what was going on around him, did—in the creek bed that the would-be prospector had crossed every day he’d owned the farm. If you’re not paying attention, you can miss seeing treasure that you already have.

For many companies and the culture in general, this is true of older workers. They are a gold mine of experience, knowledge, and well-honed skills, yet we politely move them to the sidelines—and then out of the picture entirely and into “retirement” simply because they’ve reached a certain age. Why do we keep doing that?

I can hear the clamor of defense already. Older workers don’t want to work as hard. Older workers want to retire and are just treading water until they can leave. Older workers get sick more often. None of these things are true across the board. What’s even more important to realize is that even if they are true for your company, you may be causing them.

If senior employees aren’t offered new challenges, if their experience isn’t appreciated and relied on, if they aren’t given effective opportunities to learn new technology, you’re stacking the deck against the company—and them. Without positive challenges, appreciation, and a viable chance to learn, it’s hard to enjoy your work no matter how old you are. And when you don’t like your work, you think about leaving, especially if you can retire.

You may be applauding this exodus. It “makes room for fresh blood.” You’re reducing salary and benefits expenses. But that’s like using a gold mine for cold storage. You’re not really getting the best use out of what you have. And when you “throw them away” for younger workers, you lose a lot that the company needs to know.

Why not be smarter about how you use them?

LEVERAGE WHAT OLDER WORKERS KNOW AND CAN DO. The “old pro” who can calm the most irate customer should be the role model for new hires. She might make a great mentor or even a trainer. Even if she doesn’t want those roles, concrete examples of how she handles things make it much easier for younger workers to learn how to do the job right. And she just might perform even better for being noticed.

ADD A SEASONED PERSPECTIVE TO DEVELOPMENT TEAMS. Get your older talent involved with projects that will be enhanced by their viewpoint. What are you trying to do that might run into trouble for lack of a reality check? What needs to be linked carefully to what you are already doing to be a success? Cross-generational teams should be our “secret weapon” for business success. We think of them as battle grounds. Yes, there are generational differences. There always have been. Effective managers—both of companies and projects–capitalize on them.

USE WHAT SENIOR EMPLOYEES KNOW STRATEGICALLY. Too often, we tell older workers how valuable they are and then relegate them to work that doesn’t take advantage of it. This isn’t a matter of “making them feel good.” This is about getting the most bang for your payroll buck. Even so, higher motivation is a usual side effect. And that, in turn, leads to even better performance. From them. From the company.

TEACH TECH IN WAYS NON-GEEKS CAN LEARN. All too often, technical training for older workers is a geek speaking Greek and a jumbled effort to remember stuff that never did make sense. This is not the learner’s fault. This is bad teaching. But older workers are quick to belittle themselves about their inability to learn this stuff. So poorly designed training stays in place and needed skills remain unlearned. If you were teaching your Russian subsidiary how make widgets, would you do it in French?

STOP THINKING “40-HOUR WORKWEEK”. If a senior worker wants to throttle back, explore whether they can get the essential work done on a less-than-fulltime basis. Thinking of full retirement as the only alternative to a fulltime position makes as much sense as thinking the only place you can get to from Chicago is Cleveland. Explore the possibilities. If your company has a defined pension plan especially, include HR. You may create a part-time or project-based slot that gives you more than you would get from a fulltime new hire for less money.

What we are doing with older workers is a senseless waste—to the culture, the company, the person. Grab the competitive advantage by using them to their fullest potential. You will probably be amazed.

*******

Mary Lloyd is the author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. She offers seminars on how you can create a meaningful retirement for yourself and consults to help your business attract and use retired talent well. She is also available as a speaker. For more insights on how to better use the talent of those in the last third of their lives go to => http://www.mining-silver.com.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

This article appears in the April 2009 issue of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old On Hold.

The current stresses have a lot of us feeling like we’re pushing bus-sized boulders up the Matterhorn. The trauma of having so much change so fast for so many is truly numbing. But we still have to live it. So the question becomes: How do I do this well? What can I change about the way I’m going at it that would make it easier?

Well, I’m not sure a major upheaval can ever be “easy.” But the thing I most need to change–and am least inclined to alter–is the idea that “this should not be happening.” So that’s a first step. Let’s work on getting past that. It doesn’t make any difference whether it should be happening or not, it is happening. The first step is to accept that.

That leads to the next question: If it’s happening, am I doing what I can to deal with the new situation? Your answer may be as simple as “I’m eating at home more” or as extreme as “I’m living in my grandmother’s basement while I look for another job.” But in every case, the change you make needs to be on target with your changed situation.

But is it? Sometimes we change things just to feel like we are doing something. When we do that out of panic instead of based on a planned effort, we waste time, money, and momentum at a point when we need to conserve all three.

This week started for me with a string of losses. Nothing from which I can’t recover, but quite a load for one morning. I’ve put a lot into getting people to value the talent and experience of older workers. I’m committed to this mission and passionate about the need for change. But as I struggled with my Monday disappointments, my thoughts suddenly turned toward going back to school. To study nursing!

That might be a great strategy for some of you. But I don’t do well with the sight of blood. I do not belong in nursing, even if nurses are in such short supply they can find a job in a day. But the “sure thing” seemed like the right call for a few hours there.

Don’t do it. Don’t grab at something just because it seems like the “sure thing.” Especially if it’s got nothing to do with who you really are. Sure things don’t stay that way. Just ask the bankers. Or the folks who were relying on Enron pensions.

What should you change? Change your strategies. Maybe it’s time to take it up a notch at work so people know how valuable you are. Maybe it’s time to spend less of your evening in front of the TV so you can work on things that can help your dreams take flight. Maybe it is time to take well-developed skills into a new industry or new direction in the same industry—or to learn new skills.

You’re the one who knows where things are starting to pinch personally. But to see a better way to address them, you need to stay calm. It’s hard to be calm when they’re announcing layoffs like they usually to announce Saturday night football scores on the ten o’clock news in September.

Be calm anyway. Prayer helps on this. Or meditation. Or just listening to your breath.

It also helps to regularly brainstorm other ways to deal with your current situation. Do this often. I’m always surprised with what comes up. And even more surprised with what comes up when I do it again a few days later. Once I started brainstorming, nursing disappeared from the radar, incidentally. I found some new ways to approach the challenge that I’m so passionate about. More options to try. More “next things” to get to.

Does that solve the problem? No. Having more to do is just, well, more to do. But Edison’s 1000 attempts before successfully inventing the light bulb does hold strong truth. Looking for another way is the way to get through this gracefully.

Learning how to do that gives you something you could never have gained with uninterrupted prosperity. You will gain resilience. And that’s priceless because it will serve you every time something doesn’t go your way. Being able to bounce is a very good thing.

*********

Mary Lloyd offers seminars on how you can create a meaningful retirement for yourself and consults to businesses on how to retain, attract, and use older talent well. She is the author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love, released April 2009, and is available as a speaker. For more on better ways to use the last third of our lives go to => http://www.mining-silver.com.

From Mary Lloyd, Mining Silver

This is the third of our year-long series of questions.  And this month’s comes as March goes out like a lion for a lot of us.  Flooding, snowstorms, and other nasty weather are worrying us all over the country.  And globally, we are all still stuck with this mess of an economy.  That’s a lot to get stressed about.  And most of us know all too well what stress feels like.
This month, let’s flip that and look at the opposite.  Let’s consider what “relaxed” feels like.  For April, please give us your comments to the following question:

How do you know when you’re relaxed?

Please take the time to register and leave your opinion.  We’d love to hear what you think!

By Mary Lloyd, CEO Mining Silver

Most of us have spent our careers looking forward to the day when we don’t have to actively work to have money. The pension. Social Security checks. Investment dividends. Money that comes without us having to continue the daily grind. Just a nice steady income stream whether we spent the week at the beach or working on a Habitat house or helping the oldest grandchild move into a new apartment half way across the county.

Well, that’s the way it was supposed to work anyway.  Right now, this kind of income is probably one of the most terrifying sources of cash flow imaginable.

Because it is, well….passive.  Since what we do isn’t tied to what it does, we don’t have a whole lot of room to make it go in a better direction when the current one is looking downright dire.

Right now it’s so bad that a lot of us are afraid to spend money on anything because the value of our passive sources of income is so wobbly.  This is not comfortable, but it’s important to know.  If we are aware that this possibility is part of the range of performance for passive income, we can build in ways to help ourselves cope when we get to this bumpy part of the road in the future.

We need to know this little secret about passive income as we plan what we want to do with the last third of our lives.  So this downturn has given us another unexpected gift–the chance to feel really deeply the helplessness of not being able to get our money to do a better job.  And feeling that feeling will help us build ourselves some escape routes from here on.

For some of us, it will be a matter of looking for a way to earn again.  For some of us, it’s teaching ourselves to stay calm in the midst of the economic cacophony.  For some of us, it will be refocusing on what’ s important and finding ways to keep going on that with a leaner budget.  And for some of us, it’s an adventure in how to cut costs.

You think I’m kidding on that last one, right?  Nope.  If the passive income situation is leaving you anxious, the most important thing you can do is act.   Taking action to cut the amount of money you need to live on is a good thing to do every once in a while to make sure that you are truly focused on your authentic needs.  So this is a good time to do that.

Notice I did not suggest you suck way in and not do things.  I said evaluate.  I said find a cheaper way to get what you want.  But just plain retreating?  Bad idea!

That makes you feel deprived as well as afraid.  And that’s an invitation to depression and poor health.  This situation is a test of our mettle, individually and as a culture.  The better we are at facing it,  acknowledging the scary feelings, and doing something to improve our situation, the bigger it is as a blessing.

Having investments lose value is awful.  Letting it intimidate you into not living your life is worse.

by Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

Quite a few of us are rethinking whether we are going to retire soon–or ever.   Before you opt for being a permanent member of the workforce, there’s one thing I beg of you.  Love what you do.  If the thought of doing what you are doing now until the day you die feels like drinking a large glass of vinegar, please make plans to do something else.

Once we’ve been at something for a while, it’s comfortable to just keep doing it, even if it never was fun.  But you lose in five different ways if you use that strategy.  It makes heaps more sense to love what you do.

Job Satisfaction The first reason is, of course,  that it makes your life more satisfying.  People who love their jobs are happy to go to work and come home in a good mood.  That translates into better health, too.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  No job is going to go well all day everyday forever.  But if most days have you humming while you grade the papers,  write the report, adjust the machine, or flip the burgers, you’re onto something.

If, on the other hand, just showing up at the old grind makes you want to throw up, you have a little remodeling project to take on.  You need to make your work match yourself or you are in for a steady dose of negative energy.

This sounds simple, but quite often it isn’t.  For some of us, it’s a matter of getting to the flashpoint and then saying, “That’s it.  I’m outta here.”  That works, but being “outta here” without knowing what you are going to do next can be pretty stressful, especially with the current economy.

There are some great books on how to help yourself figure out what you really want.  (Mine for example–now available as Bold Retirement but coming out April 1 as Supercharged Retirement.)  If you’re tired of reading what I have to say, try something by Martha Beck or Barbara Sher.  Use them all, one after another.  Use a life coach.  Do  a Vision Quest.  Contemplate you left thumb for fifteen minutes everyday until the light starts to dawn.

It doesn’t have to be what everyone else does to be the right thing, but it has to give you a calm sense of confidence when you start to explore it.  Be sincere about looking for the real answers.  And be open to what comes.  (Thinking you knew before you really did got you to the job you’re hating.)

Talent Match When you do what you love,  the probability that you are truly suited for it goes up exponentially.  I have a long time friend I met in college who was a good geologist.  But when he started to use his natural sales skills along with what he knew about rocks, his prospects skyrocketed.  He sold mining and construction equipment and it was a great fit.  He could sell salt water in the Mariana Trench.

Perceived Value The fact that you love what you do does not go unnoticed either.  People like to work with those who are happy with what they are doing.  And if you are doing what you love, you are probably doing it really well.  So customers want to work with you. The plum placements on the dream team also go to those who are really into it.

This is not a case of faking it for the sake of advancement.  There’s an intuitve piece to this that you just can’t counterfeit.  If you like what you do, people like working with you to get that done.  So find what you like.  Find what you LOVE.

Job Security Right, loving what you do will not guarantee you never get laid off.   Not even working for yourself guarantees that anymore.  But when you love what you do, you find other ways to use what you know to be able to keep doing it.

If you are told they don’t need you as the team lead manufacturing elephant harnesses and you love leather, there are other ways to work with it.  If you love to work in a kitchen and just got let go as a short order cook, you may hire on with a caterer, or start cooking nightly meals for clients who can then look forward to your delicious deliveries after a long day of their own work (also at something they love, I hope).

Longevity You can try to make yourself like what you are doing, but that’s a short term fix.  The real answer is to find something you love doing whether you get paid for it or not.  That  solution gives you one last plus–something you will be happy continuing to do–in some form–for as long as you live.

Including for money if you need to.  There are lawyers still lawyering at the age of 99,  and my favorite centenarian story is of the woman who was still a proofreader for the St. Louis Dispatch at 100.  Do what you love and use it to thrive–for a long time.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

This post appears as an article in the Feb 2009 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter, Put old on Hold.

What Is Your Pain Teaching You?

Right now, there’s more than enough pain to go around. The pain of losing a job. The pain of losing your dream home. The pain of being one of the survivors in the all too frequent announcement of yet more downsizing. The pain of watching loved ones go through one or all of these things.

We’ve got plenty of physical pain right now, too. Flare ups of stress-related health problems. Accidents, which just seem to be more prevalent when things are not going well. Colds and the flu hit more frequently when people are under stress, too

Yep. There are a lot of ways we’re “feeling the pain.” And we are probably telling ourselves, “This is not right. I should not feel pain.”

That’s only true if you’re dead. This time around in particular, maybe what’s causing the hurt is also what’s making us come back to life. There is a reason for pain. It helps you move fast to change what you are doing.

Hand in the car door? Yikes! You changed that fast. Even slow pain helps you learn quicker. Remember your first love and how much it hurt when it ended? You vowed “I’m not doing that again!” And the next time you probably were a bit more discerning, a little pickier, maybe even a little slower with the “I love you’s.”

How about the pain of doing something physically dumb? Like putting your hand on the oven rack after you’ve had it preheating at 400 degrees for fifteen minutes. Next time you will use the over mitt. Right?

Pain can tell us something needs attention, too. That “hot spot” on your left ankle? Use some moleskin now or you will have a nasty blister by the time you’re done with the hike. The stomach cramps that come when you have yourself convinced that only YOU can do everything remains to be done between now and Easter—of 2010? You’ve on an express bus to Stress City. Get off now!

Pain tells us there’s a problem. Maybe it’s physical, like a stone in your shoe. Maybe it’s systemic, like a finance industry gone totally mad. Every time there is pain, there is a chance to deal with a problem. We need to use pain–to help us pay attention to our legitimate problems.

We need to watch for it and wring every single morsel of intelligent action out of it.

The pain now may be purely financial. A mortgage that’s ballooned to where you’re beyond what you can handle as debt. There is pain in that inadequacy—no doubt about that. But the only tragedy in feeling pain is if we don’t change course as a result of the warning. It’s the same whether it’s knee surgery or the balance in your checking account. Pain helps you grasp the need to stop doing what you’re doing much more quickly that you would in its absence.

Pain is a good thing.

The bad thing is when we tell ourselves we shouldn’t be feeling it. There is a lot of money going into advertising built around the message that we should never feel pain. We can all eliminate all pain in our lives if we just take the right drugs, buy the right consumer goods, and drive the right cars. With that as a back drop, it’s easy to resent pain instead of embracing it so you can use it.

Pain comes to help us go in a new direction. It hurts—no doubt about that. But that doesn’t make it bad. The pain of childbirth or athletic achievements demonstrate this well. To do what we value, what we dream of, what we think is the most important thing in the world to get done is going to involve pain sometimes. Beats a blinking arrow every time for encouraging a change of course.

Use your pain. You don’t have to love it—in fact if you did, I’d worry. But respect it. It is an honored teacher and a difficult but genuine friend.

Mary Lloyd is author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love (previously titled 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. She’s available as a speaker and for seminars. Her website is www.mining-silver.com. And check out her blog THE SILVER MINE (http://mining-silver.com/retirement-planning/). She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO Mining Silver

The headlines this morning were of massive lay-offs by prestigous companies.  They aren’t the first.   They will not be the last before we are through this.  For those with jobs, the specter of not having one may have already become a constant companion.  For those without, the statistical likelihood of finding what might even be remotely workable becomes ever slimmer.

If you are retired and on a fixed income, the monsters under the bed have different names.  Can you count on the pension you’re living on?  Will Social Security implode before this is over?  And what are we going to do if the price of gas spikes again?

If you are unable to work and relying on the kindness of others, there are other ogres to face down.  What if the funding get yanked? What if they decide they have to rent the room to someone who can pay?

There’s plenty of anxiety to go around.  It is of no benefit to any of us to succumb to it.  That, however, is easier said than done.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s quote, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,”  rings in our ears.  But where do we find the courage to face it down?  How can we be sure that if we stay the course, everything will be fine?

This is life not an infomercial.  There are no guarantees.  That doesn’t change the need to keep going.  But there are monsters here and scary things that could do us harm.  How dare we go on?

We must go on.   Because going back or standing still holds every bit as much peril and far less potential.  We go on because doing what we believe needs to be done is not a matter of safety.  It is a matter of character and commitment to something larger, something in which we believe.  Those are the places where we need to  lead our bedraggled wagon trains.  Toward the thing that matter.

To be sure, some things we’ve been doing need to stop.  Buying beyond our means was foolhardy even in the good times.  Putting things on credit that you didn’t really need was never a winning plan.  Let that go.

Going after “my share” rather than committing to a meaningful purpose needs to go, too.  (All you banks who are sitting on taxpayer money for the sake of your own safety instead of using it to do the work of restarting the economy, listen up.)  “My share” is a childish construct we can’t afford.  Yesterday, there was an article in the local newspaper about a low income program the state was planning to cut.  The related photo showed one of the recipients–smoking a cigarette. Excuse me.  Why are we supporting someone who is literally burning money–and ruining his lungs in the process?

Giving anyone an excuse to do less than they can for themselves is inexcusable, especially in this situation.   And we need to hold ourselves to that same standard.  The first question for every single one of the ubiquitous little (and big) challenges that are being heaped on us is “What can I do about this myself?”

There are two reasons for that.   The first is fairness.  If you haven’t done what you can to improve your situation before taking someone else’s money to fix it, you are a leech.  Period.   (Banks sitting on TARP money, think about that, too, huh?)  We have way too much going wrong to attend to leeches.

The second is when you take care of it yourself, you prove you can.  Even if taking care of it means letting go of a dream or giving up on something you want to keep doing.  We need to step up to our own challenges.  We need to bow to changes life demands of us.

As a nation, we are never going to be able to keep people in homes they couldn’t afford to buy in the first place.  We are never going to be able to assure everyone has the perfect job at the correct wage or even a decent place to sleep.  We are never going to be able to assure that some big company doesn’t find yet another way to be stupid enough to do harm to us all.  But the beauty of this democracy is that we all have the right to make a difference.  And making that difference is where you find the courage to keep going.