Catarina's World

You can have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down, Mary Pickford once said and it’s so true. And only you can do it. If you wait for others to lift you up, not only will you be disappointed – you will stay down.

Get back in the saddle again and look at your problem in ways that will allow a solution.

Now it’s time to make an effort and make sure your life and/or business benefits. Many of you actually ask me to write more since you are feeling better after what I write. Makes me wonder if you feel good long enough to get back in the saddle again? Because you simply have to. These are difficult times and it’s essential that you realise that the problem isn’t you and get the courage to move on. And it has to come from within you. I appreciate that it’s hard but it’s in times like these that you separate “winners from loosers”.

Being positive is crucial and to look at your problem in ways that will allow a solution. Maybe you have to look at possibilities you never considered before? But no matter what, it will be a question of persevering until you succeed, and not allow yourself to feel down. And don’t forget that we are often faced with great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.

How creative are you? Ever thought about the fact that creative people are “problem friendly”? Don’t get me wrong, nobody is delighted to deal with problems but now is the time for you to roll up your creative sleeves and find opportunities to improve your life. How? The solutions will be different for each of you. We all have problems that need to be solved every day. Even if it’s just that we got dirty and have to wash. There’s no running away from problems since everybody has them. If someone says they don’t, they are simply not telling the truth. So the important thing is to try to find solutions that will enrich your life.

Don’t discard the ideas you have, value them instead and take the challenge of developing them. If you are creative you will be persistent and optimistic until you succeed. If you, or others around you, dismiss your ideas too early you will never get anywhere. Many of the ideas that I have had would in the beginning have appeared crazy to others, but nobody called them crazy after I succeeded. What would have happened if I had talked about them to early? Maybe their criticism would have killed off my ideas? Be flexible as well. The fact that you are developing one idea doesn’t prevent you from working on other ones as well. In fact, I think you should work on several possibilities at the moment because so much is changing in our world. Covering your back is always a good idea. Have noticed that when I don’t, things go wrong.

Still stuck in the rut? How about re-framing your situation by looking at it from different angles? It has the power to change your entire perception of the problem and finding new solutions.

And always, always remember that the only thing that’s certain in life is that everything is uncertain. That’s a fundamental fact of life and you have to get the strength from within to handle it, because whatever happens to you in life, it’s up to you how you perceive it. Positive or negative? Your choice. Or as Lincoln once put it “You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves”. Remember that failure happens on the road to success, which may be just a step away.

(Photo: Photo Xpress)

“Germany is going to smell like roses but (the rest of) Europe is going to be pushed into a downward spiral, stagnation lasting many years and possibly worse than that,” George Soros said.

Flaws built into the euro from the start have become acute, Soros told a seminar, warning that the euro crisis could destroy the 27-nation European Union.

“In other words, I think a recession next year is almost inevitable given the current policies,” he said and clarified that he meant a recession affecting Europe as a whole.

Flaws built into the euro from the start have become acute, Soros told a seminar, warning that the euro crisis could destroy the 27-nation European Union.

“The euro’s lack of a correction mechanism or of a provision for countries to leave it could be a fatal weakness”, he said. Germany has now imposed its ideas on how a 750 billion Euro zone rescue mechanism should be used. In other words the rest of the Euro member states have to follow in Germany’s footsteps and have a trade surplus as well as a high savings rate.

“That’s the real danger of the present situation — that by imposing fiscal discipline at a time of insufficient demand and a weak banking system, by wanting to have a balanced budget you are actually … setting in motion a downward spiral,” he said.

“If there is no exit, (it) is liable to give rise to social unrest and, if you follow the line, social unrest can give rise to demand for law and order and (sow the) seeds of what happened in the inter-war period,” Soros said.

His conclusion is that “Political will to forge a common fiscal policy in Europe is absent and since Europe is liable to move backwards if it did not advance, the crisis of the euro could then actually have the potential of destroying the European Union,”.

His analysis based on the flaws of the Euro from the start is correct and I agree with him that it will almost certainly lead to another recession in Europe. It is my hope though that it will not lead to social unrest, but he may very well be right. Europeans have throughout their lives paid for their pensions, health care and all kinds of other services. For governments to suddenly turn around and say that they can not get what they have paid for will not go down very well. Add to that the power of the trade unions and you may very well have a reciepe for social unrest.

What I’m not sure about though is if George Soros is right that the Euro crisis coupled with the current state of the world could eventually destroy the entire European Union? That it could destroy the Euro I believe, but the whole European Union? What do you think? Will the European Union survive the turmoil that will most likely take place during the next few years?