Let's start off with some important things to consider.
In my books and as a part of my own personal story, I’ve mentioned the term “crisis point” often. It refers to a period in your life that usually involves a heavy sense of loss, dread, and anxiety that can cause you to examine yourself and why things played out the way that they did. It’s an event that can be used to develop yourself, or it can be a huge tragedy that can stay with you and haunt you for months or years to come.
The power that the crisis point has over you is determined by you. The negative feelings that come up are real and are priorities that need to be addressed and worked through, no matter how you ultimately handle it. Things will feel out of your control, where you had thought you previously had control.
This loss of control, and the feeling of things you hold dear being ripped from you, are the main reasons why this kind of event is a hard thing to come to grips with. This is never an easy thing for anyone.
The loss of a spouse, someone close to you passing away, the loss of a job that you placed a large amount of your self-worth in – all of these are examples of crisis points and are not limited to these by any means. It’s whatever rocks your world to the point of serious grief.
The First Steps to Effectively Managing the Crisis
The first thing I would urge you to do is to acknowledge what has happened and your feelings around it. Set blame aside as best as you can. In the example of someone who you once dearly loved who no longer loves you and leaves, the temptation to cast blame on that person, or another person, is very real and is natural.
While you may be right that there is blame that is deserved, being stuck in persecution mode will not help you overcome and deal with this in the best way possible. Yes, they should face some consequences if they need to, and the situation warrants it. However, that is now their issue and cross to bear. Yours is getting through this with your head held high and in a better emotional and mental position than before.
Your emotions and grief are now your responsibility, as well as figuring out any role you may have played in the crisis point playing out, if indeed you did have one. That last point involves setting some pride aside, but it should also involve beating yourself up as minimally as possible. It’s okay to be less than perfect in life.
Ways You Could Handle A Crisis Point
1. Be stuck in blame mode. Take no responsibility for what happened and be a victim to circumstance. (Pretty common response, and not what I’d recommend.)
2. Conversely, just blame yourself for everything. Assume too much responsibility for what happened and run the risk of becoming despondent and discouraged. This can also lead to becoming a victim of circumstance, as well as shattering your self-worth even further. (I don’t recommend this either.)
3. Seek out all kinds of personal development sources such as books, coaches, and podcasts in a blind effort to “make yourself better” without any clear purpose or goals for doing so. You nail yourself on a cross so to speak, in a constant cycle of “needing to grow and improve”. There is no stated end goal, and if you don’t define one, you won’t have one. (While I commend the effort, I also don’t recommend this.)
4. Do some objective self-exploration and analysis, and by doing so, you begin to see where you were lacking, while gaining a clear image of what led up to the crisis point and defining end goals for improving yourself. Through this, you are better able to deal with the crisis, come to grips with it, and develop focused goals to improve yourself in areas that need to be improved. (This is what I recommend. This can take some time, and you may or may not need outside assistance. It also takes work. But the payoff is much better than the other methods mentioned above.)
A crisis point is a turning point in your life, no matter how you define it or handle it. This is something I’ve dealt with and have profound experience with. I’ve seen others deal with crisis points in other ways that I mentioned above and ended up stuck in bitterness over it.
What I provide offers a primer on how to deal with these points in your life, so that you can grow and improve in ways that make you more effective, not only personally but also in your relationships with others. You can avoid pitfalls that I’ve been guilty of making and come out the other side of a crisis point in the best position possible.
A crisis can craft you, but it should never define you.
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