Living and Leaving a Crisis Stronger

A crisis is a sudden, overthrowing experience. Everything is different, and old strategies do not work for you as they used to. The things you knew, the habits you had, the plans you were following—it all falls apart. A small virus, when globally spread, can send your entire team into social distancing, stop the flow of goods, block the economy and cause a financial meltdown.

For most of us, what we do is we look for leadership. For someone to guide us out of this situation. But what if you are all alone, or if you are the leader others are looking to? That is when you need to remember the airline security announcement, “Put your own oxygen on first!” Using the STOP-method is a powerful way to get yourself back on your feet to be able to cope with the crisis and, at the same time, build for a sustainable future on the other side of it. Adding some good habits to this method have proven to be helpful to live and leave a crisis stronger.

When you feel the crisis stressing you out, filling you with fear, anger, confusion, here is what you do:

Stop

The first thing you need to do is stop and help your brain out of the amygdala hijack you are in. The basic, inner parts of your brain are designed and trained to keep you out of harm’s way and makes you act with instant stress reactions like fight, flight or freeze. Stop. Take some deep breaths; make a cup of tea; go for a slow walk. This helps the body understand this is not a crisis you need to run from. Call your coach. As the amygdala calms down, you will have access to your cortex, all your memories, and your stored knowledge again.

Think

Now that you have calmed your brain, you have access to your full brain capacity. Feel it coming to work. You’ve got this.

Orient Yourself

Use available resources to get an overview image of the situation. What imminent dangers do you need to control? What long-term effects are potential hazards? What can be known about the situation?

Study the facts, stay as objective as you can, listen to knowledge when you don’t have it yourself. There are people all over the world specializing in all kinds of detailed knowledge, who have the long-built knowledge of this situation. What do they say? But, be careful in source control, there are a lot of thinkers and believers out there. Remember you are looking for facts and experience.

Plan

Based on what your orientation gave you, make a plan. It will be a plan that will shift, and details will change. Having a baseline and a goal on how you want to show up on the other side of the crisis will help you through that. Your base plan is like a rail to hold on to as change whirls you around, whether your overarching goal through the crisis is to keep your company financial safe, your team inspired and effective, or your family safe.

Having that goal to aim at and anchoring it in your core values around who you want to be in the world will help you weigh pros and cons in all decisions coming. Does this take you closer to your goal or distance you from it? What do you need to do in both the short and long term to achieve this? What potential threats do you need to have a plan for? What golden nuggets of opportunities are there within this change that you should pick and bring along as you move out of crisis?

During crisis things may change rapidly. There will be new information, maybe new rules and restrictions. Daily routines are disturbed or not there anymore. This will give you and the people around you several challenging psychological processes at once. Grief. Change. Innovation. Tendencies to isolate as well as to want to get together. Just acknowledge that.

You may be able to keep rational, but everyone around you won’t. And some of them will be close to you. Just acknowledge the fact that there will be irrational behaviors and do what you can to make it easy to make the right choices. Decide who are the important ones that you should focus on and give yourself permission to do so. You cannot fix everything, but you can be where it is important and where it makes a difference.

For instance, maybe you need to slow down your urge to get all the facts in social media right and focus on having your team on board. Maybe you are an influencer who can contribute greatly to society by moderating what is going on via social media. There is no right or wrong on where to focus and only you know the limit of how wide it can be. Make your choice and do so based on the goal you set to come out of this crisis. Who are the important people and contexts around you? You can work miracles with a lot of people in a crisis as long as you remember to take care of yourself. “Put you own oxygen mask on first, before trying to help others.”

Now that you’ve got it together and am standing firmly on crisis ground, here are a few simple habits that will help you walk strongly:

Create Regularity

A core sign of a crisis is that everything feels turned upside down. It is an extremely stressful experience. Help yourself and others by creating regularity. Form habits and stick to them. This is not the time to be experimenting with different breakfast habits or styles in clothing. You will have massive learning on new things and all kinds of habits will be broken. Wherever you can, create a healthy regularity that saves your brain energy and calms your senses, then stick to that.

Make Room for Reflection

During crisis, quick decisions need to be made, often relying on your heart and gut. Making room for reflection will ensure your heart and your gut have access to you brain knowledge too. Start or end each day with 5-10 minutes writing your thoughts of the day, learnings made, and ideas that have sparked. Plan to be prepared, one day at a time. Force yourself to think both long and short term. For some, it is helpful to set the alarm on five minutes to focus on the “here and now” and then shift, setting the alarm on five new minutes, to reflect on learnings that can be used in a long-term perspective.

Partner Up

Don’t go it all alone. Get yourself some perspective by having a speaking partner. Remember that people who are in this crisis with you—business partners, employees, spouses—are often colored by the same biases. Find someone outside the turmoil and don’t look for someone to tell you what to do. That is what you do in orientation phase. Now you are looking for someone who helps you get in touch with your full wisdom. You, and only you, have the exact pieces of how this crisis affects you and what it carries that can be useful long term to you. Having a coach is having a professional speaking partner who is trained to be focused on your goals and having conversations without an agenda of their own. Now is the time to have one by your side.

Stop
Think
Orient
Plan

Breathe—you’ve got this!