How to Stay Cool in a Crisis
SUMMARY
Hey, it’s David Bayer and thank you so much for joining me here today. I often get the phone call when the crisis has hit, and we’ve all been in those experiences in our life that we might have called a crisis, where there was just an overwhelmingly amount of uncertainty in our life, and that’s exactly what a crisis is. The reason why a crisis feels so extraordinarily painful is that the brain cannot handle uncertainty. So, it might be uncertainty in your relationship world when your partner walks in and, all of a sudden, breaks up with you. It might be uncertainty in your financial world when, all of a sudden, you realize your bankrupt is in the negative. It might be uncertainty in your career or your job world when, all of a sudden, you get the notice that you’ve been terminated. There are areas of our life – health is another great example, where something happens that creates massive uncertainty and, therefore, massive pain.
So, I want to talk to you a little bit about what I do to help people get through crisis and how I bring them back down because, ultimately, the crisis is in the mind. It’s oftentimes not in the reality of the situation, but the overwhelming amount of uncertainty puts the brain, puts the mind, in a certain position that it becomes very, very difficult to have any type of clarity. So, what do we do? Well, there’s three things that we can do in a crisis to sort of reclaim our power, reclaim our stability, and navigate through the crisis in a way that’s a little less painful and a little bit more productive because, let’s face it, we’ve all had these crisis moments and, even though we forget it when in the middle of the next crisis, it’s always worked out for us.
>So, the first thing that we need to do is we need to level up our certainty. If we’re in a state of uncertainty, we have to find certainty in something. So, for myself, I go back the universal creative principles. I literally go back to what I’ve come to understand about life and that is, whatever I’m experiencing here, I don’t know how in the moment, but it’s working for me. Sometimes, it’s the most tragic of moments, but I know that I’m going to learn something from this and, ultimately, I’m going to get through it and come out the other side okay. Or, I know that life is always working for me, not against me. So, there’s a divine guiding hand that I can always look to, that’s always guided me through my difficult situations, be it financial, relationship, health, or in business and, again, I’ve always been okay. I can also become curious about the situation and say, “If I know that I’m fully responsible for my life and I’m here staring at this overwhelming amount of uncertainty, which I’m calling a crisis, what in this did I create so that I can take something from this experience, transform my inner world, and affect my outer world in my future reality?” So, what can you do to get certainty around this area of your life that you’re calling a crisis?
The second thing that you can do is you can chunk it down because, when the brain goes on high alert, when it goes right into survival mode, all of a sudden everything seems like one big wall of problem. So, what can you do chunk it down and take it piece-by-piece? So, for example, I had a client call me recently and it was very clear that he had an immediate business issue. So, we said, “Well, you need to make payroll by Thursday. What can we do to make payroll by Thursday?” He said, “Well, payroll by Thursday doesn’t solve Friday’s problem.” I said, “I know, but Thursday comes before Friday, so we’re going to solve Thursday’s problem first.” If you’ve ever seen the movie, Apollo 13, this is a great example of being in a crisis situation and one at a time chunking it down and dealing with the next issue. That’s what we need to do when we’re in the middle of a crisis. We have to pull all the pieces apart, put them in priority of importance, or chronologically, and just deal with the next thing that we need to deal with. We don’t have to solve all of the problems at once.
That really takes me to the third thing, which is find the big wins in the fact that you’re making decisions. My client said to me, “Listen, I’m taking action. I’m making decisions. But, it’s not solving the problem. The nightmare still isn’t ending.” I said, “Well, the nightmare will end, but what we want to focus on right now is not solving the overall problem. What we want to do is we want to re-energize by taking solace in the fact that we’re making decisions. We’re making progress. Inch-by-inch we’re moving down the field and, eventually, we will get to the other end zone, which is the end of this crisis.”
So, I hope that’s been helpful for you. I know we all get into these states where we get overwhelmed by uncertainty. But, if you can find a way to establish another level of certainty in your life and, ultimately, if you can chunk it down so you can start dealing with each of these individual issues that are part of the bigger problem, and you can focus not on resolving the entire issue, but focus on the little wins, you’ll get through the crisis unscathed. And, let me remind you, you always have and you always will.
I hope this has been helpful for you. If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel, why not do that now? And, if you’d love to, come on over to Facebook. We’re always having interesting conversations there. Check out DavidBayer.com and subscribe to my newsletter because I would love to stay in this conversation with you about claiming your power, living your purpose, and loving your life. I will see you soon.
