My mother was embarrassed to talk about her entrepreneurial children during the 1970s. During that decade, many folks still worked for corporations, expected pensions, and planned for retirement with Social Security. Those folks had kids who followed in their parents' footsteps, and that was my mother's idea of an ideal life. My siblings and I, despite all my mother's dire warnings about the possibility of dying destitute under some bridge, refused to follow in our parents' wakes as we began to divine our own businesses. And, I think that this decision saved us from feeling any real stress about current market and work conditions.

Don't get me wrong – today's conditions aren't as bad as some periods Americans have gone through in the past. Money magazine said it succinctly in February when they compared current numbers to the 1990's recession:

The 1990-91 recession lasted eight months, and unemployment eventually peaked at 7.8% - not a staggering number but still more than 50% higher than the current rate. Home prices in the top 10 metropolitan areas fell 8.3% during the downturn and its aftermath. Today they're off 5% from their 2006 peak.

You might want to read that Money article, as they offer some wise advice about survival strategies for hard times. But, they missed a few tricks. At the end of the article, they assumed, like my mother did in the 1970s, that everyone works for a corporation and saves through traditional methods. But, my brothers and I have learned that survival can wear as many faces as the disasters that lurk around any corner. Perhaps our willingness to go our own ways without the support of corporate health plans (which are dying a slow death), pensions (which are behaving like extinct animals), and Social Security (my parents constantly thank their children for contributing to their retirement), has helped us learn how to avoid the recession blues.

Here are some tips that Money magazine missed:

1. Find something you like to do and learn how to do it well: If you enjoy making jewelry or building furniture, or writing or singing, then do it! Take lessons, study under a mentor and read everything you can about your obsession. You never know when your hobby might become your career. This tip comes in handy when you lose a job.



2. Live slim: Money suggests that you should slim down debt. I'm saying that debt is something you should avoid unless it's “wise” debt like a home, a school education or some other investment. A car, by the way, is not an investment. You might, perhaps, learn more about slugging, a respectable way go to work outside using public transportation and an occasional car rental. Look around and learn about all the things that are sucking the life out of your investment monies. Get rid of them.



3. Don't be afraid to walk away: I'm not advocating walking away from an upside-down mortgage, although I've done that myself when I was young and naive. I paid for that decision with bad credit for seven years. But, sometimes walking away from an unwise choice is a good thing. I've walked away from jobs, clients, boyfriends, bad investments and certain parts of the country. Life is too short to live with misery. Although letting go is scary, walking away from negativity leaves room for more positive forces to come into your life.



4. Build a reliable network of colleagues, friends and family: It's much easier to do this today than it was in the 1970s. Today you have the Internet, and if you have an Internet connection, then you have access to social/business sites that can help you get in touch and stay in touch with those people who believe in you. You'll need these folks when things quit you (like your job or a spouse) or when you quit things (like anything negative).



5. Be resourceful: To be resourceful, you need to help yourself to life and to break out of the envelopes that seal you from this ever-changing world. In other words, do you learn how to handle life from losers or from winners? Do you seek new innovations and thoughts (like those at TED) to broaden your horizons? If you think that life is “me, me, me,” then it's very possible that you're missing out on the life that could be possible if you think more like “we, we, we.”



6. Broaden your horizons: You may never know how good your life is – no matter how bad it seems – until you visit a very depressed country. You can read about life in these regions, but when you taste and smell the poverty, it becomes part of you. Volunteer with organizations that need your help. This means that you can travel for very little money, and it's an ideal situation if you've lost your job or if you quit that job because it was a negative situation. You might return wiser, more grateful, and ready for tip #7.



7. Be a visionary: Money touched on this tip with their “venture, carefully, beyond our shores” with investments, but they didn't take a huge risk with this suggestion. And, I'm not suggesting that you jump into a ton of foreign investments, either. Your risk, should you want to attempt it, is to think beyond boundaries, media hype, and other traditional thinking methods to envision how this world might shape up within the next decade or two. Investing in a vision is a huge risk. But if you believe in yourself and in your ideas, that investment just might pay off when everyone else has been working too hard to dream.

Oh yes, my mother is quite proud of her children these days, especially since her kids can't lose their jobs...(which is one skewed way of looking at self-employment...).

Until Later,
Linda Goin