Recession-Proof Your Mind, Recession-Proof Your Business

“Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves,’who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; you playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. You were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

--Nelson Mandela

One of the biggest hurdles in the current Western economy is in conquering the doomsday machines. We're besieged with negative speak from the media and our peers every day about how we're all going to spiral downward.

It's hard to argue with: there have been huge drops in the stock market, here in the U.S. we now have a fat cat "rescue" plan in place that will cost us tax payers $700 billion, with little guarantee of effectiveness (Certainly, that money invested back into our education system would guarantee far more long term success! But that's another blog post...). People are losing their jobs, their homes, and their hope.

It all spells difficulty in keeping the end in mind (aka your Clear Vision) when pursuing your business and life goals. How can we say that we're certain of our year-end results, when we don't know what the market's going to do this afternoon? Even if we're not directly effected, if that fear is in the heart of our client, they'll be less likely to want to spend right now--causing the agony to 'trickle down' on us.

So what can we do? Luckily, lots of things!

Every challenge presents us with the opportunity to learn, grow, and dig deep to find those solutions that will not only move us forward individually, but as a collective, too! Just like Nelson Mandela said above, "...As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” So we MUST push onward!

Step One: Revisit that Clear Vision, hone it, and own it!

Without the end in mind, we lose our True North. That internal compass point is going to help us plot our path to what we want our businesses (and our lives) to be!

It may be that we need to approach our visions in a new way. There are many methods in laying one out, not limited to:

• lists
  
• storytelling
  
• scripts
  
• mind movies
  
• audio (recorded messages or even song mixes or playlists!)
  
• vision boards (My mentor, John Assaraf, is actually releasing his new The Complete Vision Board Kit tomorrow!)
  
• questionaires or worksheets
  

If you've laid your Clear Vision out as a story in the past, maybe developing a vision board for it will help you to refocus on what you want. A movie-like script, outlining the story of your dreams may be just the injection of excitement your current mind map needs to get you pumped up again, and take your mind off of all the gloom-and-doom you're hearing on the nightly news.

According to "Creating a Clear, Compelling Vision" by Marilyn Schwader, there are four components your vision should have:

• 1. Your Values
  
• 2. Your Dream
  
• 3. Your Purpose
  
• 4. Your Mission Objectives
  

I'll be visiting these all in more detail in the coming weeks. Until then, get on that vision, and start step one in Recession-Proofing Your Mind!