RIPE - the 4 steps towards dealing with your Void

Dealing with one's personal Void can be accomplished in 4 simple steps:

1. Realizing that one's lifestyle can not be maintained and the reasons for this realization.
2. Identify the complications now occupying your life
3. Prioritize and order the importance of each complication
4. Eliminate one by one each complication moving towards life simplification

These steps can be summarized in this acronym: RIPE for

       Realization: that your life will or must change

       Identification: determine your life's complications

       Prioritization: order by importance each complication

       Elimination: remove the impact of each complication in the order chosen

Each step will be dealt with in detail in 4 successive blog posting along with exercises on how to accomplish each step in order to prepare yourself for the coming economic downturn.

Realize that once you begin the process of LS (life simplification), you will hopefully embrace the concept that LS brings to one's life. That simplifying your life leads to a more fulfilling life experience and obtaining more life contentment without the need for complications that tend to mask the real happiness that life offers when lived in the moment.

Stay with me as we learn how to apply the RIPE steps to accomplish your life simplification and prepare for reducing your Void's detrimental side effects.

Understanding the Void and its personal impact

Given the most likely scenario predicting the impact of the government's intrusion into the private sector, the most likely increase in unemployment to over 10% average with some areas more and some less, the continued consumer pullback in spending resulting in the normal capitalistic "death spiral" down to the point where prices have reset to support the entrepreneurial blossom occurring at the bottom of the spiral.

 

As the pullback impacts our lives we begin to slow down spending on what is classified as "luxuries or extravagances". This reduce spending removes fillers in our lives such as eating out, going to movies, having unlimited communication services, and other such noises. As the fillers are removed, the Void begins to form, and this is what causes the pain of forbearance accompanying the loss of these preoccupations. It is how we deal with the Void that helps us prepare for the coming recession/depression.

 

There appears to be a big reason that only in the US was the 1930's called the Great Depression. I believe that with the loss of employment, status, position, lodging, and yes, even the ability to put food on one's family table caused the Void in many during this period. For the coming economic downturn which is only getting started and soon to be exacerbated by the ARRA 2009 passed on Friday by the US Congress. the Void will form upon the loss of activities, communication access, electronic gadgetry elimination, and others.

 

You can prepare for this coming environment by beginning to simplify your life before it happens; by learning to reduce the size of the Void before it is forced upon you. Going from numbing levels of activities, scheduling conflicts, incessant digital contact, and 24-7 global events viewing will not be easy unless we begin to prepare for life simplification.

 

LS (life simplification) is the process by which one prepares for a coming catastrophic lifestyle change without having the event horizon form consuming our ability to cope with the change. LS is a process of voluntarily reducing the "life noise" that has accumulated during a period of abundance and/or opulence that can not be sustained. Such a period of "decomplification" is what appears to be approaching on the economic horizon. How you prepare for this lifestyle reformatting will determine your mental ability to cope with its emotional and psychological impacts.

 

The next blog will address the four (4) stages of LS, and how you can prepare for the coming  economic tsunami without feeling loss or reduction in social status.

 

What is our likely future in the USA?

Preparing for the possible future demands an understanding of what is most likely to occur and what if anything can one do to bulwark himself against the coming storm. With the passage and signing of the ARRA 2009 (American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009) into law, America will be contorted into a more centralist-directed form of government, dare say, a more socialist obeying monstrosity? Listening to the liberal-speak on some of the networks, calling this move by the Obama administration "socialist" is just fear-mongering, and those that do so are being partisan.

 

Regardless of what you believe, socialism or capitalism, it matters little in how the coming economic storm is going to impact your current life. Let me suggest the most likely scenario given what has happened since the beginning of September 2008 is that we are going to move into a more restrictive recession, yes, even a depression as unemployment reaches over 10%, the GDP continues to contract, and the private sector pulls back from investment and innovation.

 

This is largely due to the impact that heavy governmental spending has in a free-enterprise system where the government is just one more player in the field. Without being in total control of the economic means of production, the central government competes with private capital for investment and innovation. Since the government can literally overpower any private player in the market due to its ability to use taxpayer and taxing authorities, many private investors are pushed to the sidelines while waiting for the government to make its move or takes its stake.

 

By shoving private capital aside, the government inadvertently deepens the pullback as private capital seeks greener pastures elsewhere (see Japan as an example -- the lost Japanese decade), requiring that government increases its intrusion into the free-market mechanism, deepening the recession and those the cycle continues until an event such as a war or earth-shattering discovery like electricity shocks the economy awake.

 

So know what is going to come forward given our current situation, how does one prepare for the reversals of fortune that are likely to leap from the shadows? How does one prepare for changes unlike anything experienced?

 

I suggest that you begin to prepare for dealing with "your void."

 

What is this void? It is the emptiness that catastrophic changes initially produce as they force us from one form of lifestyle into one less acceptable. How we deal with this emptiness will determine our ability to weather the future changes.

 

Preparing for the coming economic tsunami

Due to my own preoccupation with personal issues, I have been sadly remiss in not keeping this blog current and moving positively. To remedy this condition, a transition to a more current topic may be of assistance.

 

Over the past few weeks, my mind has begun to coalesce around a topic that several discussions with friends and family has been pushing my consciousness into spending time addressing. This activity occurs during times of sleep, inactivity, and relaxation and then bubbles to my awareness once I have time to ponder their existence. It is a wonderful skill that anyone can learn, but it will take time and patience, but more on this latter.

 

These topics that have been formulating in my subconscious have to deal with a similar set of questions I have been asked recently about "how do I deal with this economic environment, how do I prepare for a possible worsening of employment or financial well-being?"

 

Such interrogatives have occupied the mind of most people given the state of decline in the current economic landscape. Every week more lose their employment conditions, many find their obligations are overwhelming their income potentials, energy costs are unpredictable, and future government demands appear to be increasing. All these depressive events increase the fear and uncertainty many are feeling about their futures. These mental wrappings are now forcing many to think about what, if anything, can they do to prepare for what may be a bleak outlook.

 

Let me begin by putting your "survivalist tendencies" to rest. You will not be able to buy, store, and protect enough supplies to keep you and your loved ones during a period of "atypical economic" unrest. First, would you really be able to turn away a friend with a hungry family once they know you have supplies they lack? Second, would you be able to take up arms to protect your cache once strangers know you have supplies to pilfer? Finally, how long can your cache actually last if the economic storm lasts past the first two events?

 

Given your inability to "survive an economic tsunami" what can you do to prepare to at least lessening its impact on your life? I offer the principle which I have called: "Dealing with the Void." I will go into this in my next few blogs, but understanding what is coming prejudices our attention.