Every time we turn on our TV’s, the radio, go on-line or open a newspaper we are confronted by recession. Sometimes it seems like there is simply no escape. How can you survive the economic recession and reduce its emotional impact? How can you stop worry affecting your health and your relationships?

That’s where coaching can help. We choose to subject and immerse ourselves in negative publicity but with the support of a coach we can choose to take ourselves out of it. It’s all about choice and coaching helps us make informed choices.

You can change your reaction to the recession now through coaching (get help if you have felt stressed for a week or more). The longer you wait - the more the problem can increase.

We are not denying that the problem exists, simply deciding when the right time to focus on it is. For example we may decide to check the news headlines only once not six times a day and to shift our focus elsewhere the rest of the time. This way we are receiving the information and informing ourselves but not dwelling on it continuously. An instant mood elevator!

During a recession there are wide-spread job cuts, which have an impact on household spending, consumer demand and investment. Many people feel devastated and lost. Most people become more cautious - attempting to limit their expenses and the last thing we want to be seen to do is to spend money on ourselves, but we have never needed to more!

Spending, particularly on your own personal development, sends that all important message to yourself that you’re still worth the investment and lessens the inevitable depression that constantly focusing on the negative causes. It also makes you more valuable to your current employer if you are still in employment, or enables you to find work faster if you are unemployed. It also sets you up to take advantage of the opportunities inevitably presented by an upturn.

Coaching in a time of recession also helps people to change their unpleasant emotional reactions, limiting beliefs and stress. It helps to change stress-related obsessions and compulsions. And through helping yourself you will be helping others- for even if one member of a family, team or organisation changes dysfunctional patterns, other members of that relationship system can also move forward. The beauty of the knock on effect!

The families and organisations who prepared for a recession will likely come out of it healthy and strong. They will have a better time during a recession because of their planning. Those who ignored the risk of recession but reacted quickly when the downturn came will do better than those who live on hope and prayer, and still don’t recognise how serious the problems are.

We all react differently and at different speeds but with the help of coaching we can move towards a healthier and ultimately more beneficial reaction to recession. We can all learn to plan, to trouble shoot and to question but to do so we may simply need somebody to hold us accountable to ourselves, a key coaching function.

We can also start to recognise that there are many people around us who are reacting positively to recession and re-inventing themselves. In a way, recession can force us to do things that fear and the need for security would previously have prevented us from doing. For example redundancy may leave us free to pursue a new career, or study an area of passion and if we include coaching in this mix we will operate more strategically- reaching our ultimate goal all the faster.

If we wish to stay in our existing job, there may have been practices we wished to change for years and now in this more competitive environment it may be now or never. During a downturn, employers will first terminate employees who are often late, who disturb others or who are not team players. Why not give yourself more than a fighting chance and change the habits that leave you vulnerable. With coaching you may soon become the employee that nobody wishes to lose.

The same applies if you are heading up a business you will wish to give your organisation and your staff every fighting chance of survival. Everyone is in the same boat, cutting back on unnecessary spend, keeping a close eye on cash flow, reducing head count – doing all that is necessary to keep the business going. But what is necessary? And what effect is this actually having on your business?

During a recession your business needs to remain competitive. So in addition to doing everything everyone else is doing – you need to do something differently and that could well be hiring a coach. Working with a professional coach your business won't just survive, it can thrive - even during a recession.

A coach can help you to focus on your people, your most valuable asset and discover how to improve their performance. A coach can help you look at the robustness and resilience of your business and by eliminating potential problems early and strengthening weaknesses so you can safeguard your business against recession. They can also help you look at your processes and increase your sales.

And what about those stress levels? We all know the damage of long term stress and, let’s face it, this recession may well last a while. If you feel recession stress, or if you are in danger of it, coaching will help you to manage that stress, increase your resilience – and to test, troubleshoot and devise a well thought out recession survival plan.

As with anything, it’s all about the questions we ask ourselves and it can help before even approaching a coach to have done a little self probing on our own personal reaction to recession.

It’s time to ask yourself…

Q1. What is your greatest concern regarding the recession? (if you have more than one list them on a scale with No1 being your area of most concern)

Q2. How do you think you are coping with recession?

Q3. How much stress are you experiencing?

Q4. What has been your approach been to recession at work?

Q5. What has your approach been to recession at home?

Q6. How often do you find yourself engaged in conversations about recession?

Q7. What sort of an emotional reaction are you having to recession?

Q8. When your hear rumours of cut backs and layoffs what reaction do you have and what action can you take?

Survive recession - invest in coaching. Remember you still have all the resources that you had before these challenging time and coaching can help you remember and intentionally activate them!

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Irish Coaching Solutions, Email: info@irishcoachingsolutions.ie