You have probably been watching or hearing the news over the last few weeks – it would be very difficult to miss it! After a couple of difficult years and when we hoped things would be getting better…well they aren’t are they? First Greece and now Italy…with rumours by the day of who is next. Add to this the high levels of UK unemployment and you can see why people in this country are finding it tough.
Now I really don’t want to understate how challenging it is for people who are unemployed, have been made redundant or find themselves in a very difficult place. It doesn’t feel good. I know, I have been there. Despite a successful corporate career I was made redundant and decided to try to start my own business with a partner. There followed a long time of uncertainty and worry, months without income and savings ran out.
I found my only way through it was to stay positive, keep calm and to take action and when results didn’t come to learn from what I had done and then to keep taking action. Not easy with a young family to support.
Yet on remembrance day (Friday 11th) I found myself sitting in a short service at my son’s school. It was a moving and uplifting experience. As well as hymns, readings, recordings, music and the laying of a wreath, the Headmaster gave a talk to the students. He told them of the sacrifice that people made, some of them of the age of those in the school. One particular statistic stood out – that in the first World War, of all those in the UK aged between 20 and 24, 30% died. That is nearly 1/3 of the population didn’t make it to see the end of the war.
And this was followed in 1918 by an influenza epidemic that killed considerably more people across the World than died as a result of the first World War. It is difficult to comprehend the challenge that was faced.
Watching the service on TV on sunday at the Cenotaph I was struck by the number of high commissioners laying wreaths…representing the commonwealth county’s. Millions of people from around the World came and joined our cause in the second World War. This was real World contagion, where at stake was the future of our liberty and way of life, rather than a financial one. Many of these people never returned home.
The number of Russian deaths, the extermination of so many other religions and races, particularly from the Jewish faith and those who we faced made this a truly catastrophic time. A time when we were really in trouble.
It set me thinking about our current predicament and how we might solve it. In the war both sides always painted the best possible picture, they called it propaganda. Its purpose to maintain morale and keep everyone positive and believing in the outcome…a victory. Could we learn from this now?
Every time I switch on the news (and its now 24 hour) or pick up a paper there is some expert telling us that worse is yet to come…the markets will go down, the banks will go bust again, unemployment will rise again and we will all be worse off…and for the long term. It’s enough to make you want to go back to bed and put your head under the pillow and hope it will all go away. Yet is this a self-fulfilling prophesy?
As someone who still thinks Robert Peston of the BBC, helped make the first crisis run more quickly and deeply with his pontificating style and tales of woe, which he seemed to reveal exclusively, with a glee and twinkle in his eye (just doing my duty), means I think so.
When people are threatened or told bad things are coming, many appear to believe it and act immediately as if it were true. As an example, individuals and businesses stop spending at a time when we don’t want them to and everyone behaves as if the bad times are here – it happens overnight for many. So their beliefs, taken from the trust they place in the people they hear the news from, drives their behaviour and in turn creates the very circumstances that are being reported.
So what would happen if our trusted news readers came on, day after day, telling us the worst was over, that the problem was minor, that markets would pick up and if this was repeated in newspapers, by politicians and finally in the streets. I think we would recover from our current travails pretty quickly, we would create another self-fulfilling prophesy.
This is going to be very difficult as our media thrives on bad news. No doubt others will comment on my naivety, and perhaps I am and this is just too simple. However, I believe we really are what we think. If we think and behave as positive and successful people then we are or will be like them. Positive thinking and self belief underpins all great performance (doesn’t mean you always feel it, just you are able to think it and do it).
So how can we create a better World, where everyone can be successful, if they choose to be. I am telling everyone that things are pretty good (and they are when compared to the War or our past health and well-being) and they will get better. Will you do it too? If you have any ideas on building this into a big and sustainable campaign then please let me know.