How To Handle Almost Every Crisis

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Ok, so things have gone wrong. You were happily cruising through life, thinking everything was okay and then suddenly, you are face to face with a significant crisis. No matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to avoid situations like this. Even if you are an organised, sensible person, you will end up falling into a situation that life has randomly thrown at you. An excellent example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic. 

While you cannot avoid situations that are thrown at you, you can have a plan and be prepared to take on anything that comes your way. It’s all about Planning, Productivity and Persistence. If you can master these three things, you will be able to handle almost any crisis that rudely interrupts your life. 

Staying calm is the very first step to working things out. Sometimes you may need to take a moment to gain clarity; others you might need to sit and wait a few days to process things. Either way, make sure that you have taken a moment to get your head straight, particularly if you are angry, hurt or very anxious. In some cases, you should start to consider forgiveness – if the situation needs it. 

You also need to have accountability. While on the surface, some situations may seem like they were totally out of your control, you may have some responsibility for the effect on you. For example, the COVID-19 situation has left many people unable to work and facing financial difficulty. It might be worth considering if you should have been a little more frugal in the past, building a savings account which could have helped you through the current crisis. Don’t dwell; just make sure you are able to hold yourself accountable to areas you could have controlled and then learn from them. 

Now, you are ready to plan. The planning stage of any crisis is crucial and will be the foundation to regaining control of the situation. You need to highlight the problem then work through all of the ways this affects your life or could go on to change your life. Once you have this, then you start to plan how to move forward and onto a better platform. Create a list of questions to help you solve immediate issues this may include, what to do after a trip and fall accident? How to find crisis loans, or if counselling could help. By identifying questions, we can then move forward to the productivity stage.

Once you have a definite plan, you should be able to see a route to the other side of the crisis. This could be just a stable situation, or it might be a route to something better than you had before. Your plan and to-do list will tell you everything that you need to do in the productivity stage. How quickly you work through this depends on several factors which include working out if you are in an emergency situation. You then work on a timeline. It could be you have a few months to get through your todo list. This can give you time to rest and manage your mental health as you progress to your exit route. If you need to sort a situation out immediately, then you’ll need to work through your list most efficiently and ensure you have covered every step of your plan. 

Finally, persistence will be the core value that will push you over the finish line and help you get through any crisis. You might find that you come across hurdles over and over again as you are putting your plan into motion. If you can accept these and work out ways around them, at some point, you will reach your goal. It can be exhausting to deal with all the locked doors or deadends that come up, especially when we thought we had a solid plan and have been productive in moving it forward. However, you need to keep on going, keep pushing every step of the way. Persistent people will always get through a situation, and they always seem to get the job they want or manage to get a refund on a holiday that they were previously told wasn’t possible. They understand that if you keep on chipping away at something, at some point, it will crack. Then you can move on and start chipping away at the next thing. 

Don’t worry when life throws you a bad situation. Just plan, be productive and persistent, and you will get through it with a positive and happy outcome. 

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