Okay, so you've chosen to wake up, ward off the fear and hype, and consult concrete facts and deeper intuition. Now what? Time to ask the question, “If we keep going this way, what is likely to happen?” What are the implications? What do we look for now?

This is the honesty step. Perhaps you or someone close to you has already bought a house at the height of a housing bubble. Now what? 1) Confront your desire to deny financial losses and unwise personal financial decisions. 2) Look at the trends. Say, for example, you are holding on to a typical real estate asset, hoping things turn
around. Neither fundamentals nor trends support a return. Add maintenance, taxes, and fees, and you are staring at more losses.
Why? The real estate bubble has popped in so-called developed countries and is about to pop in developing countries. These cycles were and are being pumped by investors looking for short-term gains before pulling their money out. This is false demand. Overall real demand is declining in middle class America and Europe. Housing supply is glutted from overbuilding, especially in Spain and China. Real incomes have fallen
in the U.S. and Europe among young people in particular. Trust in home owning has been dashed. Long term, these trends push purchase prices down.

Is the market ever going to come back to what it was? Most likely no.

Does this mean that all real estate will decrease in value? No. I would not be at all surprised to see condos near cultural urban centers go up in price as baby boomers retire, even as suburban McMansions plunge in price.

Investment-wise, it is important to anticipate where a shift in visions of the good life will increase or decrease demand and value for certain physical assets.Semi-rural medium-sized college towns with progressive values, farmer’s markets, access to nature, and simple pleasures are positioned well to increase in value as people gravitate toward a simpler, community-oriented life and leave the “rat race” behind. (Transforming Economy, pg. 124)

Transition times are generators of anxiety . We are going through a major social transition now. This often prompts people, in the medium term future, to run toward traditional stores of value hoping for stability. This pushes traditional commodities like gold and silver up in price, maybe even way up if there is a panic and another greed- and
fear-driven bubble. Humans don’t change their habits easily.

When you complete Step #2, you will have a sense of perspective about where we are going, what to expect economically, and why we cannot go back.You are ready for Step #3, to clear the financial clutter and align money priorities with deeper values and sense.

To Be Continued...come back to read all 5 steps! We would love to hear your thoughts on the second step below.

Zeus Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D. is an economics blogger, futurist, and author of Transforming Economy: From Corrupted Capitalism
to Connected Communities. He has written regularly for top alternative economics blogs, including ZeroHedge.com and OfTwoMinds.com. He has appeared as a guest on “The Keiser Report” and “On the Edge with Max Keiser” on RT TV as well as the “Inside the Eye” radio program. Zeus is a “performance educator” with expertise in philosophy and cultural foundations of education. His own blog, Citizen Zeus (http://citizenzeus.com)

Pick up a copy of the Transforming Economy e-book here. Visit Citizen Zeus to engage other essays on transforming yourself and your society. Contact Zeus at [email protected] to engage his "learn to transform" consulting services.

  Let’s do the following exercise. It will take only a few minutes:
Grab a piece of scrap paper and a pen. Put a line vertically down the center of the page,making two columns. Title the first column, “The most important things in life”. Ask yourself out loud, “What to I absolutely need, in order to live a fulfilling life?” Under that first column spend a minute or two listing the ten most important answers to that question. If you are stuck, write down five things. Now title the second column: “How I spend my day,” and write what you did yesterday, or if that day was not typical, what you do on a typical day.Now simply compare the two columns.

If you are like most, the first column has things like: family, community, faith, love,learning, financial security, health, happiness. The second column has: getting the kids off to school, answering emails, surfing the internet, completing a work project, watching TV, cleaning, folding clothes, going to the store, mostly mundane individual activities in which we don’t do a lot of thinking or engagement.

There are very few people who even spend a fraction
of their day on life’s true essentials.

Building on our conversation from Step #3, seriously challenge yourself to think, “What small things could I eliminate or reduce from the second column “How I spend my day” to open up room for the first column “The most important things in life.” 

Step #4 is about developing conscious living, the basis of real choice and success:
Become aware of life choices and progressively choose to devote yourself more and more to the most important elements of life.
Why do we spend so much time on the unimportant stuff? Well, for one, it’s easier. Unconscious living is a kind of autopilot that does not require much from us, at least at first. After a while, though, unaware habitual actions can become rather meaningless. They also prepare us poorly to handle new demands or life changes. Eventually we get alternately bored and stressed. It becomes a vicious cycle: responding with more unconscious activity to address the boredom and stress— more drinking, TV watching, internet surfing. If our lack of healthy, aware growth gets extreme, we may spiral into a sexual affair, depression, or anger and violence.

Lack of conscious, active purpose is a killer of joy
and meaning.

Raising kids or having a hobby can provide a constructive alternative to simply wasting your time, but how many of you have actually reflected deeply on why and how you parent, how parenting expresses your deeper values? How many of you ask why you take up certain hobbies?

What do my deeper interests say about me? How can I
share my deeper gifts with others? What is my
relationship with the world?

For many, these questions are never asked or answered. Instead a few weeks of vacation substitute for the “good life.” “Real life” becomes a rat race most fantasize about escaping. This is why you and I are so susceptible to marketed promises of escape: “Get rich and
stop working by attending this real estate seminar on flipping houses!” “Receive untold wealth, working a few hours a week doing direct marketing on the internet!” “Buy this dream home, live well, and make a killing when you resell it!” Sanity is achieved by conscious choice and action, not by taking up someone else’s dubious promises. The philosopher, Aristotle, was right. For practical purposes, we
are what we repeatedly do. (Transforming Economy, pg. 94)
Once you have the courage and conviction to confront the habits, mindsets, entitlements, and principles that no longer serve you or others, you have completed Step #4.

The world is not going to hand you a life. Acknowledge
that you create your life. Reorder your values. Align
your goals and actions.

You are now ready for Step #5.
To Be Continued...come back to read all 5 steps! We would love to hear your thoughts on the fourth step below.

Zeus Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D. is an economics blogger, futurist, and author of Transforming Economy: From Corrupted Capitalism to Connected Communities. He has written regularly for top alternative economics blogs, including ZeroHedge.com and OfTwoMinds.com. He has appeared as a guest on “The Keiser Report” and “On the Edge with Max Keiser” on RT TV as well as the “Inside the Eye” radio program. Zeus is a “performance educator” with expertise in philosophy and cultural foundations of education. His own blog, Citizen Zeus (http://citizenzeus.com)

Pick up a copy of the Transforming Economy e-book here. Visit Citizen Zeus to engage other essays on transforming yourself and your society. Contact Zeus at [email protected] to engage his "learn to transform" consulting services.