US Financial Crisis? Threat or Opportunity?

A report in the Los Angeles Times this morning reports on a man  who shot dead his family and then killed himself as he faced financial ruin.  Karthik Rajaram,  an unemployed financial adviser, left a suicide note saying his financial state left him few options but to kill his wife, three children and mother-in-law.

The report goes on to relate this to what it calls ‘….the bleakest edge of the economic turmoil that is rattling Americans’ emotional wellbeing. Worries about home foreclosures, job losses and plunging stock prices have sparked a surge in mental-health problems’.

Whenever I hear these things, I can’t help but think that the media do  perpetuate the fear and implicit belief that financial crisis is at the root of the problem.  I think it is a symptom of a bigger issue – the way we have created our society, linked our identity and sense of self to what ‘we have and do’ rather than what we are and can be.

There could be many reason why Karthik Rajaram did what he did.  The impact of the financial crisis could be one of them. However, I am more interested in what leadership role I can play in  encouraging people to think differently about how think about the one life we each have.

Depending on where people are coming from, the solutions offered are varied.  An organisational or sociological perspective might point to increased stress, people investing too much time in their work and/or the rewards that money from such offers.  They might point to more need for policy or action to facilitate greater work/life balance.  This, as an example, indicates to me another version of the same problem – carving up our lives into separate ‘bits’ rather than seeing it potentially as an integrated whole with different activities, facets, inter-relationships etc.

I come back to it but, for me, becoming a conscious leader or author of our own life calls for a paradigm shift – not tweaking around the edges of society’s expectations and influences of how we should live our lives.  A conscious leaders of one’s own life means ‘leaping ahead’ and opening up possibilities to ‘choose how to be’ – not cutting off options because the road ahead is already mapped out (and decided up before even opening up the path).

This allows the 24 hour witness of our own life (ourself) to be more present in our life.  Thus, in the example of work/life balance I highlight above – I prefer the option of work/life integration – not a play on words but a pathway to get people thinking differently about the ‘one life’ they have not separate bits. This requires ‘old thinking using the same tools that got us where we are’ to be challenged. I look forward to the day when work-life integration is similarly challenged and ‘life’ as an integrated whole discussed.

The Los Angeles Times went on to bemoan the increase in mental illness as a result of societal turbulence.  Yes, there is evidence to suggest that when society goes through turbulent times and norms rapidly change, suicide increases – something the sociologist Durkheim referred to as ‘anomie’ – a state of normlessness.

What if an increase in so called mental health problems or the consequences of anomie offered the means of solution and not just the problem?  Perhaps we have to wake up and not use old thinking to get us out of the mess that the old thinking created in the first place.

This calls for leadership – not from the outside but the inside.  I think my role if I am to be a conscious leader is to really ‘be the change I want to see in the world’ and lead my life my example.