Recession: A Downshifter’s Guide

Despite not having a television, somehow the gloom and doom of the media hype on our “dire economic situation” has still filtered through to this downshifter’s awareness. An alien from outer space visiting our planet for the first time might despair at our lack of understanding of the very basics of living within our planetary means. We have a rapidly growing global population and a finite supply of delicately balanced essential resources. Yet, our economic system in the West (the richest and highest consumption section of the globe) is hanging on the rather loose thread of “persistent economic growth”.

Rather than own up to the fact that this is obviously not a sustainable way of proceeding, we have been fudging the system by playing games with virtual money, underpinned by the crippling debt of the poorest in our society and hoping that nothing would collapse too dramatically within our lifetimes. Well, in the words of Peak Oil expert Richard Heinberg “The Party’s Over” and we are now suffering the hangover of our adolescent over-indulgence.

Time for us to grow up?

We might well recover from this little recession episode propped up by an over-indulgent parent government, keen to smooth things over and dry our tears. Meanwhile, the basic, fundamental need for a long-standing global recession continues. We do need to drastically decrease our consumption of oil, energy, everything if the human species is to survive.

What are the benefits to us personally of cutting back, or owning up to our personal need to go into recession? What if we were each to decide to do this anyway, whatever happens in the “global marketplace”?

One of my coaching clients, Peggy, recently explained to me the effects of coming off medication for suspected arthritis. She had been taking strong prescription medicines in order to numb the pain of her condition and allow her to “carry on living” as normal. She had wanted to continue in her job, be a mother to her children, a supportive wife  to her husband. She came to me originally for coaching on stress management, having felt pressured with trying to fit too many tasks into one day and fulfil too many roles for other people whilst not attending to her own needs. During our discussions on time management, she had started to experience some undesirable side-effects from her medication and decided to stop taking them for a while.

What she discovered on deciding to go cold turkey with her pain killers, apart from the fact that it was extremely uncomfortable of course and made her feel much worse, was that she started to focus on only the very bare essentials in her life. This was all she could handle in her painful condition and this was the place of transformation for her.

She decided to:

1. Feel and acknowledge the pain and then return to basics with investigating the real cause of it. (She wasn’t sure it was actually arthritis. That was the first explanation she’d been given with only a cursory physical examination.)

2. Discuss with her family how they would all like to live.

3. Discuss with her family what their individual needs and aspirations were, what was essential and what was material consumption masquerading as needs.

4. Continue with her coaching in order to elicit her core values and how she could change her working life to be aligned with those values.

What she discovered as a result of this was that:

1. She felt a lot more relaxed about her work.

2. Her pain reduced.

3. She felt empowered to return to her Doctor and request a more in depth diagnosis.

4. She felt closer to her family.

5. She felt less stressed both at home and at work.

By waking up to our behaviour and how it no longer serves us, we can return to our roots – the essence of what’s really important to us – and thus allow our lives to mature into something more sustainable. A recession, on a global or a personal scale, can be the essential beginnings of a transformation to a more sustainable and life-serving way of existing.