When someone is sad, depressed, feeling anxious or insecure about themselves and in pain, what can you do to help them?
Often it seems that when you try and say something encouraging to someone who is really down, it has no effect. You could become the target of misdirected anger or disappoint. Maybe they feel shame or embarrassment and shut down or turn away from you – change the subject.
It is difficult for some people to accept or hear positive things about themselves because they don’t believe in themselves to begin with. What we know to be true in our mind we sometimes cannot embrace with our hearts.
At difficult times like these it is important to stay positive and encouraging, and to perservere. This eventually lets the person know that you are not just trying to flatter them, but genuinely care about how they feel. When you really care, your heart will be felt in the weight and tone of your words.
Positive, encouraging feedback from others: family, friends, a community, is necessary for us all to feel whole. It helps us realize that we are human like everyone else, that other people are hurting too, and that [...]
Depressions: Recessions: Money Supply:
A happy shout out to economic historian Price Fishback for reminding us in a piece published in the New York Times that, as bad as things may now seem in the economy, they are nowhere near as bad as during the great depression of the 1930′s in the US.
He begins by saying that economic cycles and downturns are a natural part of the economic cycle [and "nature's" cycle], but that we may be more sensitive to them now because the big downturns have been coming less frequently since the 1980′s. In other words, we may have gotten a little spoiled and less used to the hardships of the normal business cycle [this lag in business cycles may have something to do with the increasingly loose monetary policy of the last several decades, which climaxed during the reign of "Bubbles" Greenspan].
And according to the theories of Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev on the nature of economic supercycles, we are basically due for another big downturn in the world economy. In other words, this is all part of the divine plan and this too shall pass.
But comparison with the Great Depression just doesn’t hold up. Yes the stock market is [...]