I have been doing our New Year’s cards to wish colleagues and clients a happy 2009. In the greeting I noted that 2009 looks like it is going to be a challenging year for business.

I know there is a recession but I don’t need to hear any more gloom and doom about it. Now, I know that there are a lot of people that have lost jobs and are really suffering but you know, I don’t know a single person that has lost their job, I don’t even know anyone that has had their pay cut.

Doesn’t anyone think that the constant reports of gloom and doom in the media, the incessant gloom and doom idle chatter by people that have jobs, live in nice houses and drive decent cars, etc, does significant additional damage to the economy?

Look at a graph of the stock market, do you really believe that is an accurate indication of the state of the economy?

I think back a few years, watching the post 9-11 hysteria in the US from abroad, everyone couldn’t stop repeating the “the world has changed” mantra. The world changed, but it changed back.

The next time I was back to the US, I asked some friends and family in the Midwest the following question: If the media had not reported the 9-11 terrorist attacks, you didn’t look at your stocks while the markets were closed and hadn’t been flying or scheduled to fly soon; how they would have known that the US had suffered the worst attack on American soil in our country’s history? Everyone admitted that they probably wouldn’t have realized that anything at all happened.

If Americans had recited the “the world has changed” mantra a little less, perhaps we wouldn’t have needlessly invaded Iraq.

My New Year’s resolution is to not actively participate in the recession. I am just going to dedicated myself to doing what I can do.

I am interested in accurate, objective news and information, I am glad to help out friends and clients that are affected by the recession in any way that I can. However, I don’t have patience for any more gloom and doom, especially not from people that have a standard of living hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of times higher than that of the average person on planet Earth. Count your blessings and move on. This time will pass.