Positive Mental Attitude . . .

N

NorthDrum

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Turn that frown upside down . .


- Over 85% of this country will have Jobs at the end of the year

- We have a highly qualified workforce

- We have a diversified economy that has show an ability to adapt to changing environment better and quicker then other countries.

- We are learning valuable lessons that we would never of learned had things kept spiralling up. You can only learn from mistakes by making them. .

- Our state does have good social welfare systems to assist people who lose their jobs

- Falling salaries and land costs make us more competitive for foreign investment, particularly if you factor in the superior infrastructure we have in comparison to some of the countrys we have lost jobs, due to wage costs.

- As a country we probably have more empathy for our neighbour who is struggling financially. Whereas during the celtic Kitten we wanted to at least "keep up with the Jones's", now with pain being suffered across the country more people are learning (again) to show sympathy, not begrudgery to their neighbour.

- We have accepted that our country was not working efficiently and are addressing these obvious flaws in our financial services industry and the economy.

- We will have to , as a country, eventually mature to realise that to get ourselves back on track, we have to work and take pain collectively. This should push vested interest groups to one side. Like any relationship, if we work together , we will be stronger for it . .

- We will eventually recover from this collapse. . . Time will eventually heal the wounds . .

- As a nation our circumstances could always be worse . . .;)
 
What planet do you live on? Do you write speeches for Biffo or do you want to?

- Over 85% of this country will have Jobs at the end of the year - Rubbish unless you are advocating child labour

- We have a highly qualified workforce - Estate agents for the unfinished housing estates, car salesmen for unsold cars, waiters & other front-of-house staff & chefs for the empty hotels, bars & restaurants, conveyencing solicitors for the houses & commercial properties that aren't selling, upstream and downstream services & suppliers for the manufacturers that are moving to low-cost economies, security guards & check-out staff for the empty, unfinished shopping malls, and so on....

- We have a diversified economy that has show an ability to adapt to changing environment better and quicker then other countries. - Rubbish, the property bubble has burst, our economy is broken; we were / are a one-trick pony and the poor little pony has starved

 - We are learning valuable lessons that we would never of learned had things kept spiralling up. You can only learn from mistakes by making them. - Maybe start with English lessons "lessons that we would never have learned"

- Our state does have good social welfare systems to assist people who lose their jobs - Our little state is bankrupt and may be so for the next generation at least; our only hope for survival is that the 2012 Olympics attracts lots of our building trades and that the 2016 and 2020 Olympics are brought forward by a couple of years each at the same venue

 - Falling salaries and land costs make us more competitive for foreign investment, particularly if you factor in the superior infrastructure we have in comparison to some of the countrys we have lost jobs, due to wage costs. - Dream on Biffo

 - As a country we probably have more empathy for our neighbour who is struggling financially. Whereas during the celtic Kitten we wanted to at least "keep up with the Jones's", now with pain being suffered across the country more people are learning (again) to show sympathy, not begrudgery to their neighbour. - I hope so

 - We have accepted that our country was not working efficiently and are addressing these obvious flaws in our financial services industry and the economy. - You and Biffo are beginning to get on my wick with this auld waffle; neither you nor he have done an iota to change any of the fundamentals that have seen us squander the Gold Rush of the Tiger years.

- We will have to , as a country, eventually mature to realise that to get ourselves back on track, we have to work and take pain collectively. This should push vested interest groups to one side. Like any relationship, if we work together , we will be stronger for it . . - If it were a collective effort maybe I could swallow some of the ráiméis you and Biffo spout, but in reality the the insiders are still the insiders; the rest of us got no invite to the ball

- We will eventually recover from this collapse. . . Time will eventually heal the wounds . . - Maybe in my daughter's lifetime, but hardly in mine

 - As a nation our circumstances could always be worse . . .;) - Maybe if we sank into the Atlantic or we were offered financial aid and fiscal planning by the Icelanders, other than that, this is just about as bad as it gets.
 
mathepac said:
Are ya sayin' I'm bleedin' wrong den? Are ya, are ya? :D
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Glad you took the post in the spirit it was intended . . .

Some people mistake accepting the reality of a situation and taking whatever positives you can, with putting your head in the sand. Why is it wrong to accept the faults and look for the positives . . Dwelling on the Ills of the past only hinders innovative thinking to solve the problem. only when the problem has been solved should one go back and assess what went wrong.

I am quite aware of the points you made (even my dog is as the media bombards us with negative rhetoric 24 - 7).

I was at a seminar today and an economist said that Ireland is technically in a depression (well past recession stage). You could of pickpocketed half the attendees as they were picking their jaws off the ground .

Funny thing was that there were positive speakers on afterwards. They didnt dismiss what he said, but more chose to focus on what we can do as individuals to get over this knightmare. I cant change the running of the country on my own, I cant decide where money should be allocated or indeed who should take the hit in the pocket most. But I can control how I apply myself and I can control how I feel about how I approach my own life.

Mickey Harte (Tyrone manager) was on afterwards and said some inspiring words on how to be pro active, initiate positve things in your life and to believe in yourself. It inspired me.

My job is not my life, my family are. I have said this in other threads. Sure I get upset and worried about the unknown factors in the country, but these are things I cannot control. I can only control my own happiness by putting everything thats happening into perspective.

I, like many have considered My worse case scenario. I would have to move back in with my parents and sell my home (and take on negative equity loan). If thats the worst thing that the recession will do to me , Im not in such a bad state. I will have my family and friends to comfort me.

I believe if people stopped focusing on the negatives and tried to take positives from this crisis, they would come out stronger. You dont have to be depressed or scared to learn a lesson. Part of the cyclical problem in Ireland is that we dont have a half way to do things.
 
I beileve in the power of positive mental attitude but I also believe we have a long way to go to internalise any lessons that might be taken from this economic mess.

We had a chance but didn't learn this lesson before, albeit on a smaller scale but if I can just about remember it, then so should plenty of others. As an educated country, we found it very easy to believe in a fairy tale and I really think until the media start us on the road of focussing on taking personal responsibility for our actions, we are learning very little this time either. We, as a nation, let what happened happen. We believed the guff Fianna Fail, the banks, developers, neighbours etc. trotted out eventhough we knew deep down it didn't make sense. Obviously the banks and government were culpable in a big way too but are a only one part of the problem.

What's depressing is that unless we shake ourselves out of this stupor, get rid of the current government and try and put a bit of shape on things, we will learn nothing this time either.
 
MissRibena said:
I beileve in the power of positive mental attitude but I also believe we have a long way to go to internalise any lessons that might be taken from this economic mess.

We had a chance but didn't learn this lesson before, albeit on a smaller scale but if I can just about remember it, then so should plenty of others. As an educated country, we found it very easy to believe in a fairy tale and I really think until the media start us on the road of focussing on taking personal responsibility for our actions, we are learning very little this time either. We, as a nation, let what happened happen. We believed the guff Fianna Fail, the banks, developers, neighbours etc. trotted out eventhough we knew deep down it didn't make sense. Obviously the banks and government were culpable in a big way too but are a only one part of the problem.

What's depressing is that unless we shake ourselves out of this stupor, get rid of the current government and try and put a bit of shape on things, we will learn nothing this time either.
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The economist showed us some slides that would make you sick to be honest. One of them was how the EU rated each member on 7 differant aspects of how they managed public finances.

Those seven were:

-Transparancy
- Multi Annual Planning
-Centralisation of budgeting
-Centralisation of execution
-Top Down Budgeting
-Prudence
- Value for money

Overall Ireland was at the bottom of this assessment. Would you believe the Prudence one didnt even register a score (ie. there was no prudence at all practised!

I had a great debate with a friend yesterday and we were at loggerheads over what should be done and whos fault it is. I simply think its the nations fault and that we have to change our mindset on what we believe to be important for the running of our country. If this was done, there are less likely to be politicians having to spend their time trying to lick up to certain vested interest groups.

Again, trying to keep to my OP intention. Taking on the worries of the country does no good for anybody. I think that to learn lessons from this, its not about being scared stiff and then going the complete opposite way (no spending, no lending etc). Its about balance. Its about realising the flaws and adjusting appropriatly.
 
Can I summarise?

There's way too many people crying over spilt milk.

If your job is safe be happy, ecstatically happy.

If your job is under threat, work harder.

If you've lost your job, use the opportunity to better yourself in some way.

No amount of worrying, whinging or complaining compensates for taking an objective view of things and taking positive steps you can to sort things out.

Case in point of this for me is people with investment properties. If you're seriously worried about the tenant leaving and your ability to repay the mortgage just take steps to get rid of the place as it is an albatross around your neck.

A positive attitude is not hoping things will not get any worse, it's taking well thought through actions to ensure they don't
 
mathepac said:
If it were a collective effort maybe I could swallow some of the ráiméis you and Biffo spout,
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One positive, I never knew how to spell 'ráiméis'. Thanks.

Have to agree with mathepac, this country is completely FUBAR but most people have not realised it yet. I am a positive person in general but facts are facts. I think we'll be in recession for 10 years or more.
 
Teatime said:
I think we'll be in recession for 10 years or more.
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Did anyone see the primetime program on Finland? Took them 17 years to get back to the employment rate they had in the early 90's. You'd have to hope that our glorious leaders are studying Finland right now, to see how we can avoid that scenario.
 
shnaek said:
Did anyone see the primetime program on Finland? Took them 17 years to get back to the employment rate they had in the early 90's. You'd have to hope that our glorious leaders are studying Finland right now, to see how we can avoid that scenario.
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It's not an entirely dissimilar country in many ways too!
 
Teatime said:
I think we'll be in recession for 10 years or more.
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This is the kind of wailing I was talking about.

Isn't recession successive quarters of negative growth?

I wouldn't forsee one year being worse than the next for 10 successive years!

We're probably contracting by 10% alone this year and who's to say it won't be as bad next year.

We had 5% unemployment for many years now and are heading towards 20% next year.

After that we'll either go bust reaching some kind of critical tipping point or we will recover.

We may never again get back to 5% unemployment or the relative purchasing power from 2006/2007.

But get real. We had almost the highest GDP in the world and getting back to unemployment of 8 to 10% would be a manageable situation.

Also, if the world recovers, we will recover. We may be stuck with marginal income taxes of 50% rather than 40% for a while due to poor decisions taken by the country but this is far from a crisis.

If we get to a position where are real incomes are 20% lower, unemployment runs at 10% and marginal taxes are 50% that's reality and the fact that we'll never get back to 2006/2007 levels is not really anything to cry about
 
Not surprised by some of the comments here. Nothing particularly wrong with being pessimistic, its certainly an Irish trait -

Somebody sets up a business and fails, is generally seen as a failure here (credit rating, social standing etc). In the US its seen as a positive step towards succeeding.

Somebody asks you how are you. In Ireland , the usual answer is "Not too bad", in the U.S. its "great and you".

Exact same scenarios, differant line of thought.

The glass is always half empty in this country. Nobodys ignoring the glaring problems down the road, but if you keep your job and can afford to survive then you should be satisfied with that. I have no sympathy for people saying "I cant go on holidays, or buy a new car . . .". Our generation have some tough lessons to learn, nobody says its going to be easy, but constantly talking things down serves little purpose then turning that person into a positive vacuum (ie bring everybody else down with you). Assuming people talking positively about the country are either Ill informed or delusional is ignoring the reality that we all choose to process information our own way.

Having a differant mindset or way of viewing a crisis is not ignoring its impact. Some people believe that to fully understand and learn from this crisis we all need to get depressed, lose hope, break down and only then can we recover. I believe this is the worst thing to do. Going from extreme to extreme is dangerous. From rags to riches is what happened in the 90's and look where it got us. So many people were just delighted to have money, they forgot how to be prudent with it and forgot about what hardship was like.

Its easy for even the most positive of people to get down, but I think being positive is infectious (unfortunately negativity is infectious aswell!), I think more good comes out of being positive then negative. With some of the responses here, people have obviously lost site of my original post. Every negative thing thats been mentioned here has been beaten to death on other threads. I start a thread on keeping a PMA and people start picking holes in it. Nobody will convince me that being PMA, even in light of everything thats happening , is wrong, naieve or counter productive. Just wish some of you were at that seminar yesterday, really did bring home the nature of negativity in this country.
 
mathepac said:
mine

- Maybe if we sank into the Atlantic or we were offered financial aid and fiscal planning by the Icelanders, other than that, this is just about as bad as it gets.
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With respect, I am not sure if someone living in Iraq, Afghanistan or Sudan would agree with you on that.
 
I did my bit for all of you the other day...spent many €€€€ to try kick start the economy. Unfortunately, will prob now have to spend many €€€ to kickstart my liver!
 
Teatime said:
One positive, I never knew how to spell 'ráiméis'. Thanks..
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You're welcome, but please don't take anything I write or spell in any language as true or accurate; this is the cyber-inter-virtual-thing, an infamous source of guff and waffle.
 
Oh I wouldn't worry about the country going bankrupt. Once the swine flu gets going and wipes out 10-20% of the population, there will be a big net flow of assets from the states of the deceased into the revenues coffers. Result!
 
Positive mental attitude... well since I don’t work in construction, financial services or the public sector I didn’t see any direct upswing from the boom but now the recession has hit work has never been busier, profits have never been higher, medium term projections have never been more positive from our key customers and on the home front baby number four is on the way.

On a personal level things couldn't be better.

Over the next few years I will pay more taxes, receive fewer benefits and may have to support some people close to me but so what; none of us will starve.
 
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