It seems that whoever I speak with today, EVERYONE is worried about something. At the top of the list is, of course, the economy and how much money they have “lost” (real or on-paper). My husband and I have stopped opening the 401K envelopes. It just wasn’t worth wasting a whole day to “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I learned a long time ago that worrying doesn’t change anything. It is simply a waste of time and energy. Put your time into coming up with a plan to respond to the &^%# that has come your way. The solutions may be dramatic. The solutions may completely alter the plan you envisioned for the rest of your life. In the end, you might find that it wasn’t such a great plan anyway. I have often found that the “best of times” are waiting for me after changing course to respond to adversity.
Your attitude has EVERYTHING to do with how well you will survive whatever is challenging you. One of my favorite passages comes from a little something Charles Dickens wrote back in 1859:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness….it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…we had everything before us, we has nothing before us……”
What will you choose-light or darkness, hope or despair, everything or nothing?
I also love the story the Dalai Lama tells in his book, Ethics for the New Millennium. He believes if we can reorient our thoughts and emotions and reorder our behavior, not only can we learn to cope with suffering more easily, but we can prevent a great deal of it from arising in the first place. He warns about putting too much hope in material development. The problem is not materialism rather the underlying assumption that full satisfaction can arise from material gratification. He says “we cannot always change our external situation to suit us, but we can change our attitude”. This comes from a man who lost his country at the age of 16 and became a refugee at age 24. He changed his attitude and approach to how he dealt with those insurmountable challenges!
Back to the present. Before writing this article, I reached out to the Peter Shankman HARO community (reporter’s resource site) to get a better sense of the prevailing mood outside of my immediate circle. I actually requested tips for staying positive in 2009 outside of the usual stuff we hear everyday (get enough rest, eat well, don’t drink too much, stop smoking yada, yada, yada). I was pleasantly surprised to get hundreds of responses! I heard from people who were losing their homes and yet felt blessed because their families were together and healthy. They shifted their attitudes to “shit happens and we will fight another day”. WOW!
I will now share with you some of the “tips” I received that might help you to stay positive and strong as you face your challenges:
1) “Trust your skills, trust your purpose, trust your higher power so that you can rest, relax and restore” Christine Clifton “Break Out Of The Ordinary”
2) “When life takes a turn for the worse, the grief can be palpable. One way out is to focus at least part of the day on what is still right with your life….” Suzanne Zoglio “Create A Life That Tickles Your Soul”
3) “Myth: I cannot be happy until the financial crisis is resolved. NOT TRUE! Unplug, change your perspective, watch your thinking, exercise and embrace your social support” Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo-Control Stress For Good.
4) “Life rewards the person who goes through the struggles of life and comes through them having learned the lesson meant for him or her”…….more on K.D Hardy’s VERY inspiring story here.
5) “Get outside every day, make a priority of dinner as a family, see lots of live music, don’t dwell on what you can’t change and do dwell on what you can change” more of Shel Horowitz’s tips here.
6) “Sit down and write out at LEAST 10 appreciations daily! Look around and find 10 things you appreciate….it will change your life!” Revvell Revati: 7 Steps to Revvellutionize Your Life.
7) “Change the scale-if you’re 65 and filled with regret over the chances you’ve let slip by, imagine being 85 and how much you’d give to be 65 again with another 20 years of opportunity!” Barry Maher
8) “A recession brings out creativity-instead of spending money, find things that are free like the park, the beach….open a cookbook and make a meal instead of going out for dinner…better planning saves money ! Adrienne Mazzone, Trans Media Group
9) “Zoom Out”…look at the bigger picture…realize you are not alone. Money is only one important area of our lives and I will not let it steal the joy of all the other areas of our lives! Lisa Preecs: Heartfelt Words
10) “Listen to upbeat music everyday like I’ve Got the World on a String!” Julie Gallaher: Things You Should Do
11) “For couples who are stressed and dealing with intensifying conflict, stay connected through frequent, satisfying Sexual encounters”. Melody Brooke co-author of “Oh Wow This is Great Sex!
12) “Smoke a good cigar!” Tony Tortorici
So for all of you who are indeed struggling to stay the course, keep your chin up, look at the glass as half-full and all of those other annoying sayings, I hope these tips will provide you with a new perspective.
I will leave you with another one of my favorite quotes from, Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854):
“What I lived for….I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…..Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails…..
Stay the course and know that one day, we will all look back on these times with great fondness because of what we learned about life and ourselves!
Warmly,
Ellen Banks
