Getting Through a Crisis…Three Things to Learn from Everything Happening
Getting Through a Crisis…Three Things to Learn from Everything Happening
It seems that daily, another crisis arises. It hits us personally, professionally, and globally. How much can we handle? How can we possibly process this much chaos? How in the world do we keep moving forward as leaders, as colleagues, as friends, as a community in the midst of so much strife?
Here are three ideas that offer a perspective to mitigate crises, so we can take action and not be stuck or victimized. More than ever, we need to live our best lives, now.
1. Examine your unique perspective. What often looks like a crisis is really an opportunity to galvanize your strengths and take action. We know the toll that the pandemic has taken. But from it has come astonishing medical advances, remote work environments as the norm, learning circle that have formed across the globe, and an opportunity to rethink our lives.
“It’s all right. We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish” observed Thomas Edison as his priceless records, prototypes and research went up in smoke during the fire that destroyed his entire research facility.
2. Take small steps. There is a lot written about keeping your eye on the prize during tense times. But most coaches and athletes don’t focus on the big championships. They break success down to small steps. They practice the drills, trying to do their best work every day. They don’t get distracted or overwhelmed.
Every crisis has a solution in small repetitive steps. In preparation for inevitable crises, NASA astronauts practice every step of their space flight hundreds of times before they launch. When Apollo 13 launched, the 3 astronauts experienced the explosion of an oxygen tank on the service module. A terrifying crisis. One that had not happened before. The crew didn’t land on the moon, but they miraculously landed back on earth by relying on the instinctual muscle memory created by the repetition of all the small steps from their training.
3. Develop Will Power. Without will power, we can never get past the crises that inevitably will happen in our lives. We know that crises stoke deeply held fears. They kick up our frustration on issues that keep happening over and over. They often engender a helplessness that subverts any potential good outcome.
Yet every single day, we also have the opportunity to develop will power, resilience, and the determination to keep moving forward. With humor, humanity, creativity and the will power to stay strong, we can move forward.
A favorite blogger of mine says that she quits her job as a global philanthropist every day around 5 pm. “I’m so tired of trying to solve all the problems of this world so I quit every single day. And then, against all odds, I rehire myself every morning.”
Take good care,
Susan