12 Sep Bonus Episode: Finding a Happy Medium
In the midst of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, how do we avoid the extremes? Things like total cynicism and pessimism versus toxic positivity / toxic optimism? Avoiding reality versus watching 24/7 news?
In this episode, I discuss preparing for the future and setting your intentions for how you want each week to go. (Standard boilerplate here: this is not advice of any kind. Simply me opining for your entertainment only.)
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Transcription by Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos!
Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here’s your host Sara Causey. Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today’s episode, I want to talk about finding a happy medium. I will warn you in advance that my seasonal allergies have decided to be horrid today. So if I turn into little sneezy, Wheezy or my all of a sudden my voice starts to crack. I apologize in advance, it is what it is. You decide you’ve got time to record a broadcast. And that’s when your sinus is designed to be awful. Great. So how do we find a happy medium, we’re in this weird period of economic uncertainty and geopolitical uncertainty. I feel personally like I’m in a flashback of what things were brewing up before 2008 Great Recession slash global financial crisis. And let’s face it, it’s not fun to go through a global financial crisis, I guess, unless you’re one of the fat cats at the very top of the top of the top. And you figured out how to profiteer off the misery of others. Maybe it’s fun for those people. But for everyone else in the world, it’s not fun. On a more personal level, it’s not enjoyable to go through a personal financial crisis or a personal financial hardship, it sucks. So I understand people being afraid and nervous. I’ve talked before about being prepared but not scared. And I get it, it’s easier said than done. So how do you find that middle path between hyper vigilance and fear and terror versus being more calm? What’s the happy middle ground so that okay, I’m not giving myself over to being an ER and dyed in the wool pessimists. And on the other hand, I’m not going into toxic positivity and toxic optimism either. Where do I find this middle path? So standard boilerplate slash disclaimer here, this is not advice of any kind. This is simply me opining for your entertainment only. If you feel that you need professional advice of some kind, then you should consult a professional, I cannot tell you what to do. One tactic that I have been employing is preparation, not hyper vigilance, not panic or paranoia, but just a general sense of Come what may I feel like we could weather the storm? Even just looking at what has happened with the weather. We have had a bizarre summer flash droughts and flash floods. There were people who didn’t even have access to clean drinking water. I mean, it’s very scary to think about how quickly your world can be turned upside down. So if you have at least a few provisions set back, in my opinion, that’s better than not having any provisions at all, and just hoping that somebody somewhere will be able to come and save you. I’ve talked before about roughing out a job loss survival plan. Do you know what your first phone call would be? There’s an old saying in the emergency preparedness community that three is to two is one and one is none. So I personally would not stop with just one particular person. Because what if you called that individual and they didn’t have anything to offer you or they couldn’t help? What if they were in the same boat and you really didn’t have anything to offer one another? Three is to two is one one is none. In my opinion, it’s wise to have a network of individuals where there’s a high know like and trust factor that you could call on in an emergency situation. To her credit Suze Orman has talked about pretend as if you’re already laid off, and then wargame out your strategy, think ahead of time about what you would do. So that if the layoff we hope not, but if the layoff became real, you could revert back to your game plan. I know I know, I’ve said it before on the air like Mike Tyson says everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. But the idea is, like someone involved in martial arts or someone involved in the military, you revert back to your training. When you’re in an exercise and you’re doing it as a dress rehearsal. The idea is to perfect it on the training ground so that when it’s time to use it in real life, you have that knowledge. It’s there in your brain and it’s in your muscle memory. If you’ve ever had a period of time where you trained and you worked out, then maybe you laid off for a little while maybe life got hectic or you had to recover from an injury. When you get back in the gym. It’s like that sense of muscle memory takes over and you’re able to ramp up quicker than someone who’s never exercised or never had any kind of muscle training at all. I feel it’s the same thing here, if you have some type of game plan, some type of preparation and thinking ahead, you tend to sleep better at night, you know that you have a little bit of bottled water in case of an emergency or you have some canned goods put back in case for whatever happened, maybe a blizzard of snow squall a flash floods, something were to happen, so that you couldn’t get to the grocery store for a week or two, at least you have something put back so that you and the family would have food. Same thing with a job loss in the event that this company shuts down, or my job is eliminated, I at least know where I would start shaking some trees first, I at least know who I would call and try to network with and try to get some help from. I feel like too many people. Okay, just my opinion, I could be wrong. I feel like too many people think that social media is going to be their Savior. They think that they’ll just post a message on LinkedIn. And all of these recruiters from far and wide will automatically help them find a job. Maybe Maybe not, that is not a basket that I would want to put all of my eggs in. Personally. Another tactic is simply deciding in advance how you want things to go. Now, before you turn this off, and assume this is going to get woowoo and New Age, that’s not the case, there does not have to be any spiritual component to this, if you don’t want there to be, it’s very flexible, and you can do whatever works best for you. I’ve heard professional athletes and military personnel talk about visualizing how they want the game, the match or the mission to play out, deciding ahead of time, how they want to win the race, how they want to win the match or the game, and then allowing their feet to just go in the motion that they’ve already set forth in their mind. You can call it deliberate creation, you can call it segment intending. Or you can just call it setting goals or creating objectives. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be long winded or crazy. It can be as simple as you want it to be. One of the things that I do, I kind of consider Saturday to be the end of one week, and then Sunday to be the beginning of the next that might not work for you. You may feel like you want to keep the weekend together. And Sunday is the end of one week, Monday is the beginning of a new one. Because that’s when you go back to work. That’s when the kids go back to school. I get it highly flexible here on how you would want to do this. But what I like to do is decide in advance on Sunday, how I want the week to play out what are my goals and objectives? What kind of success do I want to visualize? So I get a marker board. And one of the reasons why I enjoy doing this on Sunday is because that’s usually knock on wood a day. That’s without a lot of rushing around in the morning. Unless an animal is having a baby or there’s some type of farm injury or problem. For the most part, I can have some quiet time to drink my coffee, eat some breakfast and just relax into the day. It’s not that frenetic pace that some other days have. And I can get out my marker board and I can decide in advance how I want the following week to play out. And after I’ve written down what I want on the marker board, I say it out loud. I really like to speak on it and speak over the week and just declare what I want to see happen. And I get into it. I’m like testifying in church or an actor on a stage putting on a big production because I feel like that gives it more passion. It gives it more gusto and energy to say it out loud. Now for you that might not work, you may be in an area with roommates, you may have a spouse or your kids might think that you had lost your mind. If you’re in in a room screaming about things that you want to have happen in the following week. I get it. So for some of you, it might be easier to do this as a meditation, to just go into your quiet space, take a few minutes and visualize or just repeat mantras in your own head. Here’s what I want to see happen in this coming week. Now for me, I get fired up I really like to say the things out loud. Because for me, the spoken word, as well as the written word have a lot of power. I think that the language that we use matters a lot more than we want to give it credit for sometimes. Now I’m not going to tell you this is going to solve all of the world’s problems. And it’s not about that. As I said at the beginning of this episode, I can’t control geopolitics. I can’t control what these world leaders do or what’s going to happen in the economy over the next year. That’s not in my purview. But I can one chunk at a time or one segment at a time decide in advance. Here’s how I want this to play out. So for example, my marker board might have things on it like this week, I work on projects that I find interesting and exciting. I work with clients who value me and my time. They pay me on time and in full. My exercise program goes well, I’m able to work out in a way that’s injury free and successful. I sleep well at night, when I wake up in the morning, I feel energized, refreshed and ready to start the day. After I’ve written it out, then I speak it out, and I let it go, I don’t dwell on it. I don’t obsess about any of it. It’s like, okay, I’ve had my say, I’ve made my declaration. And now I can just let it go. I know some people don’t like the word miraculous, but it is almost miraculous, or maybe even spooky, in some ways to see just how much things line up with the intentions that you set. Again, you’re not going to be able to solve all the world’s problems. And there’s no guarantee that you’re not going to have a poop happens day, or that something is not going to come flying out of left field that surprises you. Overall, you will find that your life starts to line up with these intentions and objectives that you’re setting. So for me preparation, having some type of a game plan is number one. And then number two is going into visualization and intention setting mode. I can’t control what’s going on around me I wouldn’t claim to but at least within my little sphere of influence. I’m going to set my intentions and my goals. And then I’m going to let it go and I’m just going to focus on living my life day in and day out. Maybe that will be helpful for some of you. But I feel like at least trying to get on something resembling the middle path is better than going into total gloom and doom. The whole world is ending zombie apocalypse. Or Hashtag blessed hashtag good vibes only. I never watched the news. I never pay attention to the markets. I just always like to think love and light only. It’s like well, wow. Not Not to sound harsh. But some of the people who have bury their head in the sand good, bad or indifferent, could very well get steamrolled with what I believe is coming. That’s just my opinion. And I could be wrong. But for me, I would rather find some happy middle ground there. prepared, not scared, calm, cool and collected but not ignoring reality either. In the meantime, I hope that you will stay safe, stay sane, and I’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. we’ll see you next time!
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