7 Steps For Dealing With the Current Economic Disaster
By Toni Galardi, Ph.D.

Americans alike are struggling with the current economic disaster. No one group of people is immune to the financial woes this country is currently facing.

Dr. Toni Galardi, better recognized as The LifeQuake™ Doctor, has been consulting her clients on how to cope with these massive multilayered changes since this domino effect began infiltrating our economy. She developed a seven-stage model for preparing for economic insecurity and loss to be used as a tool for creating positive change in tough times. This model has helped thousands of frustrated people reframe their financial and career anxiety as an opportunity for a personal rebirth.

1) Mastering the first stage of a LifeQuake™ requires developing the power of observation. Greed blinds people from seeing when a bull market is beginning its decline. Developing keen observation allows you to anticipate when the tide is turning in the market.

2) Take an inventory of what is now ‘DEFUNC-TIONAL’ and get rid of it. What aspects of your life are you spending money on that are no longer life giving?

3) Detach. What are you holding on to that could bring loss or crisis to your life? Let go of unneeded things before you are forced to.

4) After your life has gone through the radical change you feared, there is an opportunity to examine what security means to you. What beliefs do you hold about yourself that are being challenged by economic loss?

5) Design the new blueprint. We need to design our psyche so we have emotional retrofitting that helps us adapt to the rapid changes of 21st century. Create a lifestyle that has simplicity in both good and bad times.

6) Practice an attitude that every loss has opportunity within it. The people who became wealthy during The Great Depression practiced this by not buying into the cultural conversation and instead asked the question, what do people need now?

7) When we fear future loss in the middle of an economic crisis, stress can lower your immunity to illness. Create a vision, declare that you and those close to you are going to come out of this stronger, healthier, and happier people and then go out and make a change in the world through a random act of kindness.

Her new book, The LifeQuake™ Phenomenon, provides readers with The LifeQuake™ Questionnaire followed by the step-by-step body/mind/spirit information that accompanies all seven stages of the LifeQuake™ Model. Readers are given unique tools to help build a secure inner foundation for adapting to change moment to moment. Visit http://www.lifequake.net for additional LifeQuake™ information and to purchase the book.

http://blog.thomasbcox.com/2009/09/procrastination-special.html

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Tom-on-Leadership/2009/09/22/Special-on-Procrastination

Procrastination – Habit or Addiction?

“Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.”
Wayne Gretsky (world famous hockey player)

An interesting synchronicity occurred for me last week. I was asked to be on Tom Cox’s radio show on the same day I received an email from a reader of my advice column at Vision magazine, both wanting my advice on how to deal with procrastination.

The irony here is that I put off writing my column and my newsletter this week until the last possible minute! Why do we procrastinate? Is it the fear of success or the fear of failure? I actually think it goes deeper than that. Most people think they procrastinate because they are just lazy or undisciplined.

I don’t think there is one answer for the why of this habit but I do think, most procrastinators share one belief: the fear of the unknown. If fear of success is truly about low self esteem and therefore self sabotage, at its heart is a small vision of what is possible. If you cannot hold a vision of yourself accomplishing tasks that lead to the expression of your full potential self, it is probably because you believe that operating from your full potential self is too much work, too much responsibility. If you wait until the very last minute to get things done, however, the deadline looming will propel you forward as a means of avoiding the pain that comes with the consequences of not doing rather than the doing of the task. In a way, it is all about avoiding pain, now or later.

As someone who is a survivor of three near fatal experiences, I can tell you that when it comes to putting off the big tasks like life change, it can kill you or create lots of trauma and drama. My first near fatal experience happened because I needed to leave a job that no longer served me. I kept putting it off because I didn’t know what I was going to do to support myself and so an addict in the facility I was working in on skid row solved my problem: he flipped out and almost strangled me to death.

In incidence #2 , it involved a marriage I needed to leave and so I brought in three car accidents, and #3 was environmental poisoning in my home ( intuitively I knew I needed to move out a year before).

If we dont carry a big vision of ourselves and what we are capable of, we seek only comfort, the comfort in the short term of delaying making decisions. Isn’t this like so many addictions, the drive to not feel pain. So how does one go into recovery for procrastination addiction?

Here are some tips:
1) Go back to your earliest memory of a decision you made that didn’t turn out as you wanted. Was it trying out for sports, turning in a school assignment you had really worked hard on, or telling someone you had a crush on, that you liked them? As you recall this event, where do you feel the emotion in your body? Now, focus your breath on this spot. As you keep breathing into it, allow your body to surrender and receive your breath just as you would if you were stretching a muscle that was tight. As the feeling begins to change, notice what feeling is replacing it. Now think of a time that you committed to something 100% and it produced your desired effect. For example, you ate healthy and exercised and your body got stronger. Place that feeling of mastery in your non-dominant hand, the one you don’t’ write with. Take your hand and place it over the spot in your body that once held the fear of commitment. This will anchor that feeling.

2) Take one area of your life that you need to make a decision about that has the lowest level of anxiety connected to it. If you need to make a career change and have been dragging your feet because you don’t want to do the same thing you’ve been doing and you don’t know what you are passionate about, do one little thing like pay attention to everything you encounter in a day that produces great enthusiasm or even mild interest. Keep a journal of all of it. Risking change through deciding begins with experiencing a good feeling around low level change like just committing to observation.

3) Commit to 15 minutes a day of quiet contemplation. No tv, computer, or even reading. Sitting still and centering yourself through the breath work of step one from above and then asking the question of your intuition: what step would you have me take next? All you need to know is the next step. The answer may come right away or it may come spontaneously when you are doing something else like a house – hold chore or as you wake up from a dream. The key is to know that you don’t have to know the five year plan, just the next step. Healing the addiction to procrastination requires tolerance for the unknown future. If you focus just on the truth of the next step, you become more oriented toward the journey of life rather than an end goal. Remember, when you take your last breath on earth, your thoughts will be on did I give it my all, not, did I make all the right choices?

As we enter the season of harvest tomorrow, the summer cycle is officially ending. Perhaps today is the day you take on one ineffective habit or task you’ve been putting off and experience the opportunity that procrastination has buried.

For more on this subject, listen in tonight Sept 21 at 8:00 PM when Tom Cox interviews four thought leaders on this subject. I am on first from 8:00 – 8:15.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Tom-on-Leadership/2009/09/22/Special-on-Procrastination

call in number is (347) 838-8279.

And for those who wish personal consultation or to make direct contact with me, call:
PHONE: 310-712-2600
EMAIL: DrToni@LifeQuake.net
Sincerely,
Dr. Toni Galardi
“The LifeQuake Doctor”

1) Whatever your normal exercise routine has been, put in its place for three weeks a practice of 20 minutes of walking in the morning and 20 minutes at night. Getting the blood moving into your brain and connecting your mind and body will keep your body agile and grounded when you can often feel a bit spaced out from the lack of structure. This in turn makes your brain agile.

2) Watch your caffeine and sugar consumption. The more alkaline your diet is with the help of leafy greens and a multi mineral vitamin, the less stress your brain will be under and the more creative you will be to entertain out of the box career strategies. I know I have spoken about this before but it bears repeating. Caffeine, sugar, and too much stress and worry create acid in the body. An acidic body is the perfect breeding ground for cancer.

3) Make a practice of taking 15 minutes a day to look at something you have judged about yourself. What is the strength of that trait? For one person, it might be their anger. How can you use your anger as a positive quality to create a new life purpose? Perhaps that might be to become a crusader of some cause or advocate. I know of a man who left his job at the height of his Wall Street success to take a position in an NPO with an 85% pay cut. He used his type A personality to get funding for a charity he believed in. For another person, it was that she’s an empathy, extremely sensitive and found working in a corporate environment very taxing so she started doing massage on the side and eventually left her job when she was able to support herself as a massage therapist. The key is to look at what you might have thought of as a weakness as the very core of your gifts to others.

4) On this same note, with compassion and gentleness, make a list of habits that are not serving you or allowing your highest potential to be expressed. Commit to changing just one at a time. As you master one, you will feel empowered to go on. When we are in the throws of a busy career, we don’t have time to look at ourselves and retool for creating better functioning. Here is the time to make changes that will benefit you when you are back in the workplace.
5) Before you get out of bed, count your blessings, as many as you can think of. Then ask yourself, how you could bring a piece of heaven into your limbo state today. If it means taking a walk in nature, do it. If there is a flavor of something that is heavenly, eat it with complete presence not as an intention of numbing out discontent or fear. Imagine a ray of light pouring like rain into the top of your head streaming down to the tips of your toes.

The time “in between” has been written about by shamans and sages. Many experience it as their time in the desert but even the desert when it gets enough rain, becomes covered in blooms in the Spring. Spring will come and you will be ready from the inside out.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a liciensed psychotherapist, public speaker, columnist, and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive not Just Survive in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. Dr. Galardi is doing an eight week group for those wishing to move into their best and highest potential. call 310-712-2600 to register. limited seating.

A journalist for The Los Angeles Times recently asked me if I thought volunteering for a non-profit organization could help a person in career transition or career burnout. I replied without hesitation, yes! Now there are the obvious ways it can help: networking at high ticket charity events, brownie points on your resume’ so you can substantiate just what you did with your time this year while you’re out of work, and if you’re just getting out of school or the mommy track, well, giving it away for free may be your only option to getting work experience for a beginning resume’.

However, in my new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon ( written prophetically before Wall Street quaked) I spend an entire chapter ( in fact, it’s the last chapter) extolling the benefits of altruism. Lest you think that volunteerism is just a good career move or humanitarianism in general, demonstrates self sacrifice, consider this:
1) Becoming an agent of change for the world’s greater good will elevate your self esteem rather you get a job or are viewed as the next Mother Teresa or not. A study was done with depressed college students who were put to work volunteering for six weeks. At the end of six weeks they took the same self inventory as they had at the beginning of the study. 75% reported a marked increase in their mood and attitude about life.
2) There are health benefits. Your immune system gets stronger through volunteer work. They measured T cells in HIV survivors before and after caring for home bound AIDS victims and T cells went way up.

3) The context you hold your life in will change. For example, after you’ve gotten over a bad cold or complaining about your aches and pains, visit a children’s oncology ward. Trust me, you’ll thank your body for how good it has been to you. Angry that you can’t eat lunch out like you did when you were making great money? Volunteer at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen.

4) There are always people less fortunate than ourselves and volunteering can keep your self confidence up as well as change your value system while you are negotiating the white waters of career change.

5) Volunteering can improve your relationships. Generosity is infectious. The more generous you are with your heart to those in need, the more open to your loved ones needs you can become.

The way to make the most of your volunteer experience is to make sure it fits with what you really enjoy doing, that you don’t over commit yourself and feel burdened and resentful, and you have the attitude that you are getting back more than you are giving. If you really give 100% of yourself while you are there, you will receive a glowing recommendation from your supervisor and will get the greatest health benefit from feeling like you are making a difference not just using it as a strategy for resume building.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a psychotherapist, public speaker, and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon. She can be reached through her website, http:www.LifeQuake.net or by calling her office at 310-712-2600.