Crisis, depression, downturn – no matter how you put it, the feelings the current situation generates are the same: fear, panic, pessimism. Stories of layoffs and closed doors hit us on every channel: TV, newspapers, blogs, email lists at work, water cooler stories of what’s happening in other companies. I won’t link to any of these stories, I don’t want to help the general depression feeling grow.

The best advice anyone can give you is not to panic and not to give in to feeling depressed. You might have heard this particular piece of advice before, but you should repeat it to yourself daily, use it as some sort of personal mantra. Why? Because panic makes you stop thinking and because depression keeps you from seeing the opportunities lying right in front of you. As we all know, fortunes do not evaporate, they merely get redistributed. No matter how dire it all looks, we are far from having no options at all.

I am not trying to say you’ll wake up tomorrow and it will all be gone, but there’s nothing the right attitude and positive thinking can’t solve. It will definitely be harder, everything is shaky and most of what you have planned will be postponed, but as long as we’re still breathing, there is a way out.

So tell yourself you’re going to have a good year in 2009, that whatever comes your way, you’re more than able to handle it and you’re off to a great start. For everything else, business strategy, marketing, PR, effective sales schemes, all adapted to an economic downturn, there’s always a search engine to help! Focus on the right blogs, and you’ll find the food for thought you need.