_REFLECT!

What The Hell Is Going On?

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Most of us don't like change. Why? Because it means making an effort to move out of our perceived comfort zones. Very often change also brings uncertainty with it. Few see opportunities. Many are paralysed, disorientated or confused by lack of stability or too many options. Life today is like a hypermarket with about an average of 70,000 products stocked on the shelves. You enter a shop because you want to buy an apple, and you end up buying a banana. Who knows why?

Of course your reaction to change depends on where you are in life. You may be a student, unemployed, an entrepreneur, a freelancer or a company manager. Ever-increasing responsibilities such as family and children, a mortgage or employees may seem to make it impossible to change. They leave us exhausted at the end of the day. These responsibilities are in many cases the principal reasons for people putting up with the same situation, the same job, the same company for years on end. This continues until one day the environment forces us to change, pushing us. God alone knows whether towards good or bad.

'The world changes, and we must change with it.' There was nothing new about the words Barack Obama used on 20 January 2009. What was new was Obama's attitude towards change: 'Yes, we can.'

Taking this as a premise, wouldn't it be better to prepare ourselves and take the initiative in embracing change in our lives instead of being changed by others? To take a positive attitude towards change? To see the exciting opportunities it offers, rather than just the threats? Personally I don't like other people taking decisions in my life — I prefer to take them on my own, for better or worse. But at least I can stop blaming others. This saves a lot of time and energy which is far more enjoyably invested writing on an exciting new blank page: my future!

THE FORCE OF CHANGE: LIFE AT SPEED

What the hell is going on? That was the first question I asked myself when I started work on this book, just as the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929 was unfolding. Like many others, I felt strange about the impacts of the financial crisis, economic instability and the tremendous job losses in the USA and Europe. When a company such as Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008 I was really surprised. A company with 128 years of history — a company which had survived Black Friday in 1929 and two world wars. Then we heard about countries like Iceland on the point of bankruptcy. Later still, Dubai was in serious financial trouble and so too Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain ... and we still do not know where it will end.

All that has happened in just ten years since the last recession in 2001. Not long ago. And, be sure, the next recession will not be too far away.

The key point is that these are not just events happening somewhere else. We read about those in the Financial Times or watching CNN. We feel touched by them, somehow, but they are of no further personal consequence to us. No, this is the real news, which affects us all, more then ever before. Especi