Obama Speech Recommendation - DECISIONS without FEAR

Here's another brazen suggestion for what Prez Obama might say to the Joint Session of Congress next Tuesday. (I've played this game before. See this.)

The Fearless Usually Win

When things are scary, it’s time to be rational. Be cool. Keep your head while all about you are losing theirs. Be a leader and show the frightened how not to lose their heads. It’s time for all of us to be leaders.

The rational, cool thing for Americans to do in this economic situation is to make spending decisions without fear. For instance, if you need a new machine at your small business for productivity or safety reasons, and you have thought it through carefully, don’t let fear keep you from making the right decision. Or if you think some work on landscaping your house will improve its value in the long run and your personal satisfaction in the short run, don’t let fear lock up your thinking. The “fear” influence on decision-making might cause you to just reject a productive spending decision. Fear can be very thought distorting and cause you to avoid a productive decision. The default decision caused by fear is to do NOTHING. Just wrap your arms around yourself and say “No, not now. I’m afraid.”

Of course, when you do nothing, you are hurting your suppliers and their employees. Worse, you are weakening yourself, your ability to bounce back and grow. In fact, this do-nothing sort of decision hurts the whole economy and everybody in it, and that’s all of us. Fear wins. And you know what Franklin Roosevelt said about fear itself.

I strongly urge you to make your spending decisions without letting fear be the guiding force. Let judgment be the guiding force. If you judge that a certain spending decision is wise and will be productive, then make your decision based on that.

Note, I am not advocating shop, shop, shop ‘til you drop. I applaud prudence and more savings. We must avoid at all costs the irresponsible actions that many of us took by spending more than we could afford and by taking risks beyond our tolerance. It’s definitely time for sensible financial decisions. But it is NOT time to be paralyzed by fear. We can stop this downward spiral in our economy by regaining our confidence in the power of our ideas and our judgment.

So if you believe that purchasing that machine for your small business and landscaping your place are win-wins, move forward and buy that machine and hire that landscaping crew. And do it with the confidence that this great nation will shake off our financial headache and begin to prosper again in direct relation to how well we ALL ignore fear and trust our judgment. Jobs will stop being lost; new opportunities will start being born again. We can save ourselves by demoting fear to caution. Caution and judgment are good;

fear is really stupid.




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