e can never know exactly when a recession will come, but history has
taught us that there's always a recession coming. The best way to cope with such
disruptive change is to be prepared for it, whether it happens or not.
In this issue, career specialist Barbara Moses
offers a dozen specific things you can do to prepare yourself emotionally and
professionally for a recession (and they're not bad ideas for good times, either): First
of all, take charge of your own career--take your "career temperature" when you
feel a chill. Invest in upgrading your skills to keep up with the standards in your
industry or profession. And develop other skills you can fall back on, should things slide
in the industry you're in now. Perhaps most importantly, you should cultivate emotional
resilience so you can rebound quickly from a setback. See "Recession-Proofing Your
Career," page 18 of the print edition.
We know recessions probably always loom somewhere in our
future because we have repeatedly experienced the ups and downs of the business cycle.
This "continuity of pattern" makes the future a little more knowable, despite
the fact that the future does not exist and cannot provide us direct knowledge of what
will happen, points out World Future Society President Edward Cornish.
The future, he explains, is an idea, not a physical
reality. All of our information about the future comes from the past, but we can use this
information to know some things about the future. See "How We Can Anticipate Future
Events," page 26 of the print edition.
