What is your Perception

Consumer confidence is an indicator responsible for the overwhelming majority of our economies success or weakness.  For a lot of Americans, your confidence and the way you perceive the success of our economy depends on how we grew up and who we spend our time with.  Our family, friends, co-workers, colleagues and closest contacts can influence our perception of reality. 

I was at Porcello Jewelers today Bellevue and was humored by two drastically different points of view from the two store attendees that I spoke with. One of the employees expressed an enthusiasm for the future of our economy and the emerging confidence that has been created by the last 3-4 weeks on the Stock Market.  He shared his view on the new president and our ability to pull ourselves out of the challenge we have recently faced.  The other gentleman shared a very different point of view.  He spoke about the fear he had and the necessity to pull money out of the markets and stash it away for safekeeping.  He envisioned another big fall in the markets and a depression like state here in the Puget Sound over the next coming months.  He had a bearish outlook on local real estate as well.

Well, if you haven’t already been able to tell, I envision our local glass being half-full and not half-empty.  I understand that over the last 8 months we have experienced frightening changes to our economic climate.  Thus resulting in an enormous burst in our confidence bubble.  I also understand there is consistent job loss, and a stifling lack of confidence, but as of late the reality is; we’ve have really started the process of curing our economic hangover.  Since some fear has subsided and we have moved into the 4thmonth of this year I’ve incredible signs of life.

Imagine what will happen when we go out to dinner again.  Maybe when we decide to buy that shirt we have been wanting or we take our family out to a movie or a baseball game.  All of these acitivies lift our spirits and produce velocity that will begin to catch our economy on fire again.  It’s not easy with the media these days to turn off the negativity.  We are constantly bombarded by negative ads on TV, Radio, and the Internet.  Well, if negativity has created a shrinking in our economy, positive attitudes and optimism will do the same. For a basic example of this think about this; most media outlets will talk about how bad unemployment is and how unfortunate our employment picture has become.  There are a few of us out there that see it a different way.  I see that 91.5 percent of Americans have jobs.  I also see that we are only 4 percent off of the healthy unemployment percentage of 4.5%.  So how do you see it?   

Lift your glass up…….lets toast to a new attitude as we head into some of the best months of the year.  When you wake up tomorrow, instead of laying there with your head under the pillow; get up, and head into work with a smile on your face.  The positive feeling you get with a change of perception will catch like wildfire and we’ll be back before we know it.  Cheers.  It’s a good life!

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