Recession Survival Tips

In hard financial times, what can Positive Psychology do for us? Acacia Parks-Sheiner

Dear friends

This is a great piece by Acacia Parks Sheiner on how positive psychology can help us through the toughest times!

source: http://www.blog.happier.com

Enjoy

Rona

We are so used to throwing money at our problems – be it through the fleeting comforts of decadent food, the numbing distraction of movies and video games, or the brief but powerful “zing” we get from buying a new gadget or handbag – that it’s hard to imagine how we should be coping during a financial crisis. The temptation may be to keep doing what we’re doing, even if it means racking up credit card debt; what else can we do?

The truth is that we’ve adopted these kinds of methods for coping not because they are our only options, but because they were, at least at the time that we adopted them, the easiest options. When money is plentiful, what’s simpler than throwing some cash into a quick fix so we can get on with our lives? During a recession, however, these strategies are no longer so simple. Where that habitual $6 cup of gourmet hot chocolate (or that $50 gadget, or that $200 cashmere sweater) was once an allowable indiscretion, now it might be the difference between making your car payment and… not making your car payment .

One reason why people hesitate to start a self-improvement program is because there are always “easier” ways to feel better, like the methods discussed above. We evaluate the relative cost of various strategies in terms of the time and effort they require, and the quicker, easier strategies win out. But what happens when those strategies become much more costly, as they have in today’s economic climate? Suddenly, throwing money at our problems isn’t the wonder-solution it used to be, and we are left scratching our heads, unsure what to do with ourselves when we feel bad.

In her hit song Soak Up The Sun, singer Cheryl Crow croons, “It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got.” People roll their eyes at such a suggestion, not because it’s trite or untrue, but because it’s one of those sayings that sounds so simple but turns out to be ridiculously elusive. In fact, ten years ago, it was anyone’s guess as to how one might begin to pursue the goal of wanting what you’ve got. Indeed, many people have ventured a guess, as is evidenced by the mountains of self-help books available in your local bookstore; as for empirically-based conclusions, those have only begun to surface more recently.

Article source: http://blog.happier.com/