Many people maintain that a crisis will teach them wisdom, strength, and resilience. While I fully believe that worrying is a negative and useless activity that we should all try to curb, I have a different take on crises. Experience has taught me that a crisis shows up who and what people are made of – it is certainly not a time to learn new skills.
Life has a way of throwing curved balls at us, often kicking us right out of our comfort zones and our well-planned schedules. I recently came across a statistic that would be difficult to challenge or verify. What happens to us, said the business guru, makes up 10% of our lives; our responses to these events, make up 90%.
This reminded me of the famous Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, dr. Victor Frankl. He was exposed to unthinkable suffering and humiliation in German concentration camps during World War II. Amid cruel and inhuman treatment, he realized that the soldiers could break his body but not his spirit and that he had the power to choose his response to whatever blows he received. And in this choice lay his growth, his happiness, and his ultimate freedom.
Choosing your reactions – how you think, feel, and act – creates your reality. In many cases, we cannot choose what happens to us or our loved ones, but we do have the choice of responding to these happenings. In every choice, you can see a challenge or a disappointment as a disaster or an opportunity.
If it is to be it is up to me. This has become many optimists’ mantra, particularly in the times we live in. There is also a saying that there cannot be healing without feeling. Do not suppress your feelings of hurt or disappointment, but try to accept what has happened – as if you had chosen it.
When a challenge comes your way, forcing you into a detour, instead of asking WHY ME?, try to rephrase the question to HOW CAN I TURN THIS AROUND? Your super-power lies in where you choose to focus your attention. Recreate your reality by choosing how you think, feel, and react to the curved ball that came your way.
