This weekend a well-known British institution that succumbed to the Credit Crunch, Woolworths, finally closes its doors. A transatlantic creation, it became a household name for cheap and cheerful goodies and was strong in my memory for bags of sweets, recordings/CD’s and Christmas decorations.
This is a very visible reminder of the economic upheaval that is sweeping across the UK and international landscape and no doubt across the consciousness of many of us right now as we prepare for the return to work after the Christmas holidays. As you shake off the lethargy perhaps of the holiday, rub the sleep away from your eyes and summon up the enthusiasm to get back on the road or train and resume your working activities, at least some of you may have the thought, “will I still have a job, now or at least by the end of this year?”
Readers of this blog will be very much aware of the urgings on this site to be very mindfully aware of where you allow your mind to go when stuff is going on around you and of consciously refocusing it on what you choose to experience. Readers will also be very aware of the stress being placed on how strongly we are being challenged right now by major events and of just how important it is to have a practice of regaining your own inner stillness and focus.
However, in situations like the present one, we also need to use the power of the mind to focus on what we are choosing to create. Not for nothing do people at this time of year make New Year’s resolutions. It’s another way of setting intentions for the year ahead. This does also of course need to be accompanied by planning and taking action. Otherwise the process is purely academic. But, when things seem to go awry, this is when your own clear sense of purpose and direction is so important.
What can happen is that the day by day activities and distractions of life can take us away from our intention. With regard to people’s jobs, this shows up in the sheer shock and surprise of job loss and the disruption and disorientation that people experience as they start to grieve for their loss. And it can take people a long time to come to terms with what has happened and to start to build a new direction.
However, those who take a more far-sighted approach, who look to the bigger picture and have vision, they are already looking beyond the economic dip to the next hill, to the next career step, to the new business proposition, to the innovation that they want to be a part of. It was during the last downturn, in the early ‘90’s, that the personal computer took off. IT was booming. Bill Gate’s vision after all was to put a PC with his software on every body’s table and Microsoft has 95% market share of PC operating systems – for the moment.
So, if your future is uncertain right now, then now is the time to reflect on your own vision. What do you really want? What would excite you and meet your needs? It may not be what you are currently engaged in. Often these upheavals come for a reason but they are hard to see when we are in the middle of them. What is your purpose? What are you in this for? When people get in touch with what they are really about, it puts a new perspective on their endeavours. With a clear vision and mission, you can plan and set your intentions to go about creating the new reality that gives meaning to your life. Recessions have a very effective way of calling us to pause and reflect on what we want, where we are going and how we are going to achieve what is important to us.
There’s a big difference between being caught up in events seemingly beyond your control and knowing where you are going.
So, if this resonates for you in any way, now is the time to get down to work on you and your direction. Then you can move forward mindfully, with true purpose, aligned to your highest vision for yourself, unattached to what is going on around you.
As people here in the UK are getting themselves ready for the feast of Christmas, as we reach the silent point at the turn of the year at the winter solstice today, it’s a very appropriate time to shift awareness away from the stresses and tensions of work – especially as many here are not sure what work they’ll be coming back to in the New Year.
Families gather, people go shopping, thoughts turn to the anticipation of having a good time. Others are tired and are looking forward to a rest. Others too have holidays booked for the Christmas, although less than usual.
It’s easy to forget in the hubbub of activity that Christmas in a predominantly Christian country is the time when traditionally people celebrated the birth of their saviour, although now I read that only one third of people believe in the story of the Nativity. However, people still usually think that this is a special time of year. It’s hard not to feel the impact.
For a spiritual warrior however, now may be a very good time to pause to think about how she or he can also use this time to think about what really matters, to reaffirm his or her intentions, to reconnect with what is more cherished and vital in his or her life, and about what she or he might wish to put energy into as the old year comes to an end and a new year dawns.
This time of year is when the earth’s energy stills itself, and it is when we are drawn within. This is concealed by the pre-Christmas activity, but it is happening. So, as you go about your preparations for the feast, just have the thought that part of your awareness is also within. As it is a time of spiritual importance, whatever your orientation if any, allow that energy to infuse you. It’s a good time to go and meditate somewhere, if you have a place in your house for that, or pray if you do that. This is important, since that is one way that we can re-energise ourselves at a core level.
When we pause like this, we allow ourselves to connect with our inner vitality and thus with our purpose. This can get lost or put in the background in the busyness of current living. Now it needs to be got out, dusted down and given full attention. Because with a strong sense of purpose, of intention, you can then get out there renewed to face whatever is around in your world in the New Year.
This is a time of remembrance, of re-membering, of re-connecting. And it is also a time of celebration, of joy. Joy is part of who we really are. We are beings of light and lightness, of laughter, of fun, of enjoyment, of enthusiasm, of energy. The heavy stuff of life is when we’ve allowed our minds to go where we don’t really want to go, when we’ve got caught up in our stuff. Now is a really good time to re-connect with who we really are, to allow that energy to infuse our bodies and to have fun and pleasure.
So, make an intention for Christmas that you are going to have a good time being who you really are! Then notice whenever you’re feeling down and re-mind yourself of your intention.
We’re getting round to that time of year when we would normally be spending large amounts of money on Christmas. Except that, by all accounts people aren’t this year. The consumer downturn has been phenomenal here in the UK. People are talking of a slump, of heavy rises in unemployment in the New Year, of depression, of the horrors of deflation. I saw one report that said that frugality would be in fashion. So, given the dire economic gloom, what is your Christmas going to be like, if you celebrate this feast?
You could of course ignore the news and have a real binge. And why not? We need to enjoy ourselves, to bring joy into our lives. Christmas is typically a time for joy and feasting. After all, why buy into all this negativity? And to me, there would be a lot of sense in not being attached to the negativity that’s out there.
But I wonder if there’s a part of you, like many of us, who might be thinking, “but it’s all that excess of spending which got us into this mess, borrowing money we couldn’t pay back”.
Or there might be the thought that, come the New Year, the economic maelstrom might descend on you. So better retrench.
Despite our best efforts, it can be very hard to insulate ourselves from the negativity around us. Others might say, “Well that’s being realistic”. From a personal development perspective, it’s an important question to ask yourself. “Am I allowing my thoughts and feelings, my choices and decisions, to be influenced by what is going on around me?”
You might for example live with people who are negative or you might work with them. At work a person who is deeply negative can in effect pollute a room or a team. When whole groups of people get like that, it can be downwardly very powerful.
So how do you keep your spirits up while all this is going on? For that matter, how do you keep your spirits up when things are perhaps likely to impact you directly?
For me, it is very important to distinguish between what is occurring for me and what is occurring for others. At the shadow level what is happening is also a part of me. I need to notice that and challenge my own thinking and feeling. How much am I also allowing fear to take hold? Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. It is an illusion. In other words I am creating it and I can choose to let it go. This is all about keeping my spirits high.
I would suggest that through becoming aware, challenging, letting go and shifting my state, becoming anchored in my awareness of who I am, I intentionally do not get engaged in the stuff that is going on. I witness it. From a space of inner connectedness, I notice what happens. I keep my awareness focused intentionally on steady awareness within.
It is through approaches like this, by determined use of the will, by maintaining one’s practice, that we can stop ourselves from being caught up in these machinations of the collective Ego. It is very important, especially now.
It is important because people need your leadership, to help them find their own way out of the mess they find themselves in. And the leader must keep his or her own sense of centredness. That means challenging and stepping out of the traps set by the Ego, the old habits of thinking feeling and perceiving, the limited sense of self.
And if you don’t have your own practice to maintain you own sense of inner well-being, now is the time to get one. “A pure mind, a pure life”.
Today in the UK the weather is its characteristic grey. That may be an outer reflection of how people are feeling inwardly. Often at this time of year, as the evenings draw in and and it gets colder and it rains, November is when people often feel depressed. With the economic storm clouds gathering and people’s livelihoods on the line, this may feel a doubly depressing time for many.
It can be very easy to lose sight of hope. With depression, life closes in and becomes heavy and lifeless. One feels hopeless.
It can also be hard to see what is positive in life and to lose touch with what one does have that has value.
Losing sight of oneself and one’s value is a deadly process. It is also a complete denial of who we are, which is infinite value. Part of the human condition perhaps is to be tested in this.
The practice of gratitude can seem a remote activity at this stage but it has great merit. With gratitude, you tune in to yourself and state what it is in your life that you can be grateful for at some level. Make a list. Bring in everything, even the body which you inhabit and the beauty of nature that surrounds you and the air that you so freely breathe. You might find that gradually the list gets bigger. After all, as a human you do have great merit. Like everybody else, you’re just learning.
The practice of gratitude is a way of saying thank you for something given, freely given. In expressing gratitude, we open our hearts and energetically give our love to others, or in this case to ourselves for what has been given. After all, what is more important than to love ourselves - because we are temples of love.
With these thoughts of giving in mind, especially to those who have not or who are without, as we do as Christmas approaches, you might like to watch this touching short (5 min) film on YouTube. I think it’s been around before but I just got the bigger version today. It certainly touched me.
When much wanted change finally comes, it can seem like a wonderful fresh breeze blowing away a lot of stale air. After a period of being stuck, all seems fluid and hopeful, full of possibilities. Perhaps the election of Barack Obama, the first black President of the US and with a very different dispensation from the previous regime, may be one of those moments - a fulfillment at last of Martin Luther King’s dream. Despite the financial crisis and looming recession, there is maybe at last something moving in the body politic and one which offers a new dawn on the issues the US and the world face. So, welcome Obama!
When wanted change finally comes, it sweeps in or emerges gradually, but it does happen. Suddenly everything can look like a different place. Somehow there seems to be a sense of possibility. When shifts like this happen, we look upon the world differently and believe in things in a way that we didn’t before. When whole groups of people do this, lots can happen. It’s very powerful.
And it’s worth enjoying a new sense of optimism, even when times seem difficult.
It’s a great object lesson on how a change in our perception of a situation can affect our whole outlook on life. Of course we think it is something in the external world that has created it, the illusion of Effect. According to that way of understanding things, what we think is conditioned by things outside of us. What we don’t see is that we are at Cause in the process, albeit in this case jointly. It is our minds that have changed, we have thought the new thoughts and felt the new feelings, and we actually control that, even when we think we don’t.
For me, it is a useful reminder that perspectives can change when I change what I see, or in other words when I think differently. Whatever the stimulus, internal or external, my mind neurologically goes down different pathways, and makes new meanings. What it is important to remember is that we can change how we see things and have different outlooks and different options as a result.
As we now contemplate a possible new order, it might also be useful to think about what we could be viewing differently ourselves. Who or what could you be thinking about differently? Is there someone who you’ve being seeing in a negative light, who perhaps actually has some positive qualities, if only you let go of that negative attitude which might be past its sell-by date? Is there someone whom you could forgive? Is there a situation which you keep reacting to in a particular way, which if you let go of your attitude and started to think differently might actually get changed or be approached differently?
In fact, what needs to change in your life at the moment? What are you hanging on to that is past its sell-by date? What in your life is stale and needs to be moved on. How much have you found yourself being a victim of circumstance or other people when maybe if you changed your mind could be moved on in some way?
When significant change occurs, yes we might feel scared, but also it opens up new possibilities. And it’s important therefore to think about what you intend, what you envision, and how you could move with the change yourself, and embrace a different, more fulfilling reality. It is after all your own choice.
So, with the advent of Obama, now might also be the time to bring in some changes for ourselves, and take responsibility for that.
How caught up have you been in the drama of the global financial panic in the last few days? Have you been finding it scary?
I was running a workshop with staff from a bank this week when the share price of banks hit the floor. They were very, very unhappy people. The sense of stress was palpable. In the City of London there is tension everywhere.
Look too at the photos in the media of traders holding their heads as stock prices plummet.
What have you been doing? Checking on your savings and investments, moving money out of exposed locations? Listening to others as they tell of what they have heard. Noticing the rumour mill pounding away?
From a personal development standpoint, this is a time when we get tested. And we regularly get tested on what we are about - from which we make learnings. Right now, for those who are keen to make empowering learnings, one thing to keep uppermost is clarity of focus on managing our own state.
Fear is the number negative emotion, that gets us firmly stuck in a dis-empowering mode. Full blooded fear freezes us and reduces our capacity to think creatively. We become imprisoned in knee-jerk survival responses. It is not who we are. But if we stay stuck in fear, particularly this all-consuming fear, then we get more of the same. This is how we create our reality. The universe brings us more of what we think about. Then other negative things follow in train, like "I’m poor". "I don’t have much of value". "I have no value". A great way of creating what we don’t want.
And this stuff is co-created. In other words, if others are also thinking it, then we do it together.
So the message here is to become powerfully aware of your current state, step outside it, and witness it. In NLP terms that’s dissociating from it. Anchor yourself in your one true state, who you really are, that steady, contented, all-knowing self, where real joy and happiness lies. Do something that helps reinforce that state. If necessary read the stuff being put out on this site. Go meditate. Seek out good company, not those who are keeping you stuck in negativity. Go to church, or the temple or the mosque. Pray if its that that works for you. But bring yourself into a centred state. From that place, witness fear but do not allow yourself to be caught up in it. Do not let it be part of your reality, even if it is others’ experience.
From your centred place you can make empowering choices that create your vision of the world and communicate with others from that standpoint. Thus can you provide truly inspiring leadership.
And support others in not allowing themselves to be imprisoned by fear.
If you walk round the City of London at the moment or take the train to Canary Wharf, people are very quiet and they don’t talk much. People look glum and worried, others tired and strained. They scan the financial pages of their paper.
No surprise. We’ve just witnessed an almost cataclysmic crisis which threatened the whole global financial system. Even though there’s been some major rescues there’s still lots of jobs on the line. In New York, it is estimated that for every job created or lost in finance, there’s four other jobs that are also created or lost. Smaller businesses are reporting much reduced trade. Everyone’s affected. No doubt thinking how they’ll pay their bills. There are many who’ve got no experience of this sort of thing. Also it’s worth pointing out that this recession, if that is what it becomes, has come on us very fast.
When people lose their jobs in this sort of environment, the impact can be devastating, because they don’t necessarily see it coming, they aren’t so confident about another job for a while, and it hits their finances hard, especially if there’s no redundancy money as appears to be the case with people at Lehman Brothers. And they can go through a form of bereavement since it is truly a form of loss.
No wonder everyone’s subdued. Everyone’s affected. Crises of this kind reverberate right across the economy. Today we are more overtly connected perhaps than ever before. So spare a thought for others at this time.
When people experience this kind of impact on their own lives, it can come as a huge blow. You might feel angry with the company for getting you into this situation. You might also blame yourself, for not having managed things differently. You might feel you’ve failed, especially if your driver has been something like “I must be successful”.
What isn’t so easily seen at this stage is that such crises prove in time to bring great learnings and benefits, if you find a way to work through the crisis on a personal level. There’s the whole process of coming to terms with what has happened, accepting it and moving on to develop alternative strategies and new paths. This is characteristic of a major change process and it can lead to new discoveries, innovation, a new career, a new sense of purpose, a new role in life. You can even emerge from the process a lot wiser and with more humility.
Exactly on cue, I today received an e-mail with a link to an inspiring video of a talk by JK Rowling to Harvard graduates at the graduation day this year. In it she tells of her own ambitions and of her grinding poverty as a single parent with no money. What is so wonderful, to me is that, in all her trials as she produced the fabulously successful first novel in the Harry Potter series, she reveals that she always knew she’d write. The vision was there well before and it kept her going. It was what she had always wanted.
Whatever happens, always have your vision. Such is the power of intention, and it can take you through the hardest and most challenging of times. Never lose touch with your own faith and belief in yourself. Even if you feel hard-pressed for a moment or two and you feel in despair, stay with it. The human spirit has immense power. It is always there: the intrinsic inspiration from within, the power to imagine better.
Watch this. It takes a while but it is worth it. Enjoy!
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