Keep Calm and Carry On

April 7, 2015/W.A. Smith Financial/Comments Off on Keep Calm and Carry On

During World War II, the British government used a poster campaign to help the general public prepare for and deal with the realities of war on their personal lives. The first poster was encouraging: “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution will Bring Us Victory.” The second was a bit menacing: “Freedom is in Peril.”

The third and most well-known, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” was ironically never even distributed. It was scheduled to be posted should Germany invade Britain, but that never happened. Perhaps it has been the most enduring missive due to its more tempered message — both realistic and reassuring.

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “Keep Calm and Carry On, The Real Story,” from The Churchill Centre, Mar. 7, 2012.]

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “So what is this Keep Calm and Carry On thing all about then?” at Keepcalmandcarryon.com, accessed Feb. 20, 2015.]

Throughout the recession, we looked for hope. Instead we got a slow, lumbering recovery — both here and abroad. But apparently we don’t need a booming global economy to carry on. Great times may be great, but as we’ve witnessed over the last few years, good times aren’t so bad either.

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “Stock markets keep calm and carry on,” from Reuters, Feb. 18, 2015.]

You may be familiar with the oft-quoted adage that you can’t control the things that happen to you, but you can control the way you react. According to a recent Forbes article, there are five surefire ways to help adjust your attitude as a means of handling whatever life throws at you:

  1. Never complain again — or, more realistically, go 21 days in a row without complaining.
  2. Feel great by waking up earlier. Wake up one hour earlier each morning to focus on yourself.
  3. Take 100 percent ownership. If you take ownership over all that happens to you, there is no one and nothing left to complain about.
  4. Exercise your mind through journaling. Through documentation, you can see the things that you continue to repeat year after year.
  5. Believe in something bigger. The law of attraction says if you believe that something will happen, the universe will move out of its way to make it happen for you.

 

 

 

 

Personal life coach Tony Robbins suggests that people can master their “internal world” by adopting the viewpoint that life is not something that happens to you, but rather, it happens for you. With this approach, you acknowledge that everything bad that happens must be for a reason, so you use this knowledge to figure out how it will serve you.

He suggests conducting a seven-day exercise in which you say “erase” anytime you catch yourself saying anything negative or derogatory. If you truly focus, he jokes, it’ll take you about a month to actually go seven consecutive days without having to say “erase.” The exercise is meant to make us fully aware of how much negativity seeps into our consciousness every day.

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “5 Ways to Improve Your Attitude in 2015,” from Forbes, Dec. 31, 2014.]

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “An In-depth Interview with Life Coach Tony Robbins,” from The Huffington Post, June 29, 2012.]

Whether you are currently experiencing a stretch of good or bad fortune, the one thing you can count on is that nothing lasts forever. One of the best coping mechanisms is to devise a well-thought out plan to deal with misfortunes. It’s best to do this during the good times, as it provides confidence to help you through the bad times. Naturally, we’re here to help you through both.

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