In the last few days the Banking Gnomes of Zurich have become the Lemmings of London.
Our so-called investment bankers have lost all sense of proportion. No one appears to be thinking sensibly. They are simply in a blind funk.
This is exactly the behaviour we might have expected from a large group of people who have been on an emotionally charged feeding frenzy for the past few years. Their sole preoccupation has been satisfying their greed from inflated profits whilst never questioning the underlying value of the products in which they were trading.
Thinking has been a commodity with very little value amongst our so-called financial leaders.
As the situation has deteriorated into a state of bedlam, the media have been quick to fan the flames of negativity, as they always do. Bad news is the staple diet of reportage.
So, if you want to allow yourself to get caught up in the roller-coaster ride of doom and gloom all you have to do is allow your imagination to run riot like the Lemmings of London and you will soon become as stressed and idiotic looking as they are. However you may not be able to pay yourself an inflated bonus for creating mayhem as past performance suggests they probably will at the taxpayers’ expense.
The climate is ripe for creating a major outbreak of stress-related dis-eases. These are not viruses you catch by breathing stress- contaminated air or touching stress-contaminated objects; rather they are emotionally transmitted by listening to too much bad news and choosing to believe it. You can also catch them by talking to friends, colleagues and acquaintances in a negative way.
The point I would like to make is that it is not obligatory to catch a stress-related dis-ease. You have choice in this matter. You can do the one thing of which the panicking lemmings appear to be incapable, you can think for yourself.
It is your life we are talking about here. Do you want to live in a way that is controlled by outside events that are beyond your control, or do you want to enjoy yourself?
I like a saying attributed to US President Theodore Roosevelt, after whom the Teddy Bear was named, he said: “I have been afraid, but I made myself as though I were not afraid, and very soon my fears went away.”
Any good personal development coach will encourage you to take charge of your thoughts. My teacher Duncan McCall frequently reminded me, “Unless you take personal responsibility for conditioning your own mind, other people and events will do it for you.” How true.
At the moment the newspapers, television and radio are bombarding us with bad news. It’s a kind of terror campaign designed to send our imaginations into overdrive and spread mass-hysteria and stress to the entire nation.
Well I for one don’t buy it. I refuse to allow the fact that a few greedy traders have made a major balls-up to dictate the way I live my life.
I feel proud that ordinary British people have not formed queues outside of banks and taken their money out at the very time when the banks so desperately need it. Ordinary people have behaved with dignified calm as they watch in amazement the shenanigans in the City. Why are these Traders taking money out of companies at the very moment when those companies need support? Greed!
They are playing a ridiculous, thoughtless and very dangerous game.
In one of my Mastermind Groups this morning we enjoyed inventing a number of ways that we could all prosper in the current climate. We had a very upbeat meeting and all came away feeling thoroughly refreshed by our positive thinking and the support we were lending each other.
The way forward can only come from good quality thinking not from simplistic lemming-like emotional reactions.
David Ferrers, m.nlp is a Success Coach and Mastermind Group Leader. www.DavidFerrers.com
