What to do when your best intentions fail

Yikes, no one wants to be labeled a failure. Most people do anything they can to avoid failing. Yet unfortunately, there are times when it happens.

Economic failure creates more failure

This economy has created more failures than possibly ever before in history:

People who have never ever lost a job, lost their job.
People who were never late on a bill have fallen into hopeless financial misery.
People who were always top of everything have found themselves on the bottom. All of this makes us feel like we are failing.

People often ask how my business (Design Resumes) is going, often with the comment, “you must be doing great with all the job loss out there.”

I always respond, that though I am doing well thanks to new marketing strategies and following expert marketing guidance, I fully believe I could be doing even better in a good economy.

Why?

In a good economy, people have the confidence to invest in experts (including career experts like myself.)
In a good economy, people make moves to new positions.
In a good economy, business owners add more jobs. All of these things will make my career marketing business grow.

People need confidence to change jobs, spend money, add jobs, and in general move forward. In the last five years, no one has felt very confident.

This economic downturn is known as the worst economy since the Great Depression or the worst economy in 80 years. How long was the Great Depression? I finally asked my husband this morning how long he thought it was. He thought 5 years. Since then I Googled, the Great Depression lasted 10 years from 1929 to 1939.

In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the world’s economy can decline. The depression originated in the U.S., after the fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929 and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday).

This economy is not looking good but hasn’t reached 10 years and we certainly hope it doesn’t but I think because of our ability to communicate on so many platforms, we share the new much more than in the Great Depression years. From Forbes:

The recession started in December, 2007. Go to the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) to see the complete history of America’s recessions. What that history reveals is that before this last recession, since the Great Depression recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously lasting 16 months.

Though we have long exceeded 16 months, I think we can have hope that it will end sooner. Most of us paid little attention to either history or economics when in school. However, suddenly we start to realize the significance of all those lessons.

Should we just fall into hopeless?

No! I think just the opposite. The more we whine, complain, and feel dismal, the more we will perpetuate the problem. To get out of this situation, we have to both be thoughtful in our spending but also willing to invest in our future.

The sit-on-our-hands philosophy will propel us further into trouble. We have to keep making responsible financial decisions and thinking positively despite the daily course of negativism all around us.

When I watch people interviewed about their job loss or unemployment, I hear a common theme. They gave up! They may be in a field that is not growing right now but that doesn’t mean that their skill sets can’t be used in other areas or they can’t add new skills. The “giving-up” mentality is what makes the unemployed stay unemployed.