Time is Running Out (Part 2)
Fortifying your mind to weather the incoming storm
January 2025 is not a time I am looking forward to.
I believe the quickening of the unraveling will begin to peak around then, and there will be much pain and gnashing of teeth by those unfortunate enough to not have prepared. The confluence of an economy slowing down, coupled with continuing geopolitical escalations in the Middle East and Ukraine will rise to a boil after the conclusion of the US presidential elections at the end of 2024.
In fact, the incumbent regime is having an incredibly difficult time holding things together until at least the elections have concluded. As I type this, the US is holding a hail-mary last-ditch ceasefire talk to avert escalation as Iran and its axis reportedly prepare for an attack on Israel.
Whether it be a financial accident that plunges us into a systemic risk scenario, a broadening of the current wars into regional wars, or some combination of the two with the digital world order acting as a catalyst, the world is teetering on the brink of massive shifts that generations in the future will study as one of humanity’s pivotal turning points.
So yes, I do believe that time is indeed running out as we continue to barrel down the path that I laid out in my last post on this topic over here:
Just look around you and observe what is happening:
The stock market flash crash in late July
Iran threatening to strike Israel
Ukraine invading Russia
The attempted assassination of Trump, and how the US was literally an inch away from devolvement into civil war
The riots in UK
Mpox (clade 1) detected outside of Africa (Sweden) for the first time
and more…
Can you believe that was just all in the last month? We still have four more months to go in 2024!
I think we will make it. But just by a smidgen.
Mindset Orientation First
In preparation for what’s to come in 2025, one might be tempted to focus on procedural tasks to reduce risks to livelihood, especially if a family is involved.
We’ll get to that - but first, we must address the more important component: mental agility.
Having a pliable yet grounded and clairvoyant mind will be absolutely critical to weather the stress, uncertainty, and whiplash heading our way. The best strategy and plans will fail if we do not possess the proper foundation and fortitude to execute them. There is no room for mental weakness during the turning.
We must acknowledge the possibility that the world, and our lives as we know it may be a relic of the past. Even if you don’t think it is probable, it is possible and because it is life-altering, you should take a moment to at least consider what essentially has been the unthinkable.
Because Black Swan events lurk in the dark crevices of unthinkables.
The first order is to recognize that your job or business is a facility to generate income - and that it is not the only facility that can fulfill that capacity. Disrobe the illusory security that they seemingly provide. It is a cloak that weighs you down. Even in the worst case scenario where you lose your job or business, your world will still continue, and you can find or create new ones as long as you aren’t lazy and have a strong mental foundation. Rather than being the end of the world, it’s a chance to turn to a new chapter in your book of life.
If you are an employed worker, a key mental shift is flipping to a mindset where you own corporations and jobs rather than them owning you. What that means is having the mental state where you recognize that your are in the position of providing companies a favor, for which you agree to accept renumeration for. In essence, you are using them to accumulate wealth, experience, and connections with people so that you can pursue your real objective in life later on. Nothing more than a means to an end that they should be thankful for besides paying you money. They do not own you, they do not control you, and you are not in their servitude. There’s no difference between you and a consultant, except that you receive benefits and are paid through different schedules such as salaries and bonuses.
In reality, such a mindset is not the way the majority of corporate workers think. Instead, fear wafts through most of the halls, meeting rooms, and open-plan workspaces as the thoughts of a myriad “what ifs” permeate invisibly. Perched near the top of the list, is “what if I lose my job?”
Similarly, if you are a business owner, the corresponding mental shift is to not get trapped in a fragility feedback loop cycle fed by the sunk-cost cognitive dissonance. Success in your business does not necessarily have to beget more success in the same tunnel. There is no single golden goose to success - there are many of them. Protecting all the effort, hours, and capital you’ve invested into you business will result in a fragile mindset. The trap is that the more successful you get, the less you are willing to deviate because there is so much more to lose. Much like a job or career, there is the danger of being held hostage by this fear of losing all that you’ve worked for.
We must realize and accept that there is no need to fear hardship because some of humanity’s best moments have manifested during the most difficult of times.
In fact, one of FoFty’s Principles is:
We embrace the inevitability of pain rather than avoid it
Pain is not something we can escape in life. Nobody can. It is as inevitable as death. Understanding this fact, the Principle is to embrace it so that it can be transmuted into something productive in life instead of letting it become a destructive force.
The idea is not to seek pain like a masochist, as doing so would not lead to success in the long run. Rather, it is the realization that avoiding the inevitable is an exercise in anxiety and stress. It is a source of fear, and thus weakness.
Once you have mastered and have become the master of your life, you will have equipped yourself with a base that is pliable, open-minded, yet grounded and immovable in its foundation. You have ditched tunnel thinking and are open to all options, including options that were once not considered possible in your life.
It is critical that you achieve this mindset orientation because the unmitigated fear I described earlier is poised to fester and grow, like a malignant tumor as the prospect of an incoming recession grows higher each day as discussed in Part 1:
Time is Running Out (Part 1)
To recap, the Fed is astonishingly terrible at engineered soft landings - once interest rates were raised, a recession followed soon after they started reducing them afterwards:
What’s that you say? Going back 40 years to 1985 is not far back enough?
Don’t worry, I’ve got a chart for that - here you go:
So guess what the Fed is about to do next month - that’s right, cut interest rates after a feverish cycle of raising them because inflation, which they once poo-pooed as transitory, has now been “defeated.”
Stay tuned for Part 3 where I will discuss Financial Strategies to weather the incoming turning now that you are mentally prepared to ingest the options I shall share.