Never waste a good crisis: a crisis also offers opportunities
It is sometimes said "never waste a good crisis" and a crisis we do have with the corona crisis, but how can you apply this in your own life?
In Chinese, the sign for crisis consists of two parts, danger and opportunity. People often respond to danger with flock, freze, fight or flight: coming together (sometimes very intimately 😉 ), freezing, fighting or fleeing
The last three I'm going to talk about.
Indeed, you can slip into freezing. You then wait and see how things will progress. Bears, for example, hibernate and their forest remains a forest.
Many people do this. They keep holding on and putting things off. Procrastination is also often a form of freezing.
Then you have people fleeing from danger. Those fleeing from crisis an sich. Who flee into anything and everything. Netflix, food and drink, who don't want to read about it either, who just flee.
Then you have people battling the crisis. You then have two sides. You can very recalcitrantly disobey the rules and say, "Fuck this and that. I'm going to do whatever I want." This is not always the most convenient variant.
Or, and this may not really be fighting, take advantage of it. Then you come to the opportunity.
After all, fighting is energy, but it also takes a lot of energy. That doesn't usually make you happier.
So the other side is an opportunity.
An opportunity to do something different now.
I often think of kickboxing and aikido. In kickboxing, you give and receive blows. Someone who does aikido is never really in a fight. They absorb the other person's attack.
So there comes a situation or an attack. That one goes past you, you fend it off in such a way that it goes past the person. You put that attacker on the ground. You yourself have no pain and the other person has no pain.
This is much harder to do than delivering blows. Of course you have to train in both cases, but to perform aikido well you often spend years. Then you always have a challenge to someone doing kickboxing.
If you can do it then it is very convenient.
Then when something happens you go into freeze mode. You are present, but as if in the eye of the storm. Then you see opportunities around you and the key is to seize those opportunities.
If you currently run a business, you’ve probably already noticed that the opportunities are now online. Of course, that’s not the only opportunity for a business to take action.
As an individual, you can also look at how much value you can add and for yourself, for other people, in your relationship(s). It doesn't just have to be business related, but it can also be important for your environment.
You can add a lot of value to something that can be an opportunity now for later.
What you sow, you're going to reap. If you sow a lot, you are going to reap.
You don't always know how much is harvested.
When I start seeding I hope people will come to a seminar of mine at some point, but you never know in advance how well that will work out. It just seems like heartbreaking fun.
But imagine that you don’t have a product, but you do sow love, attention, and things like that. You’ll get that back. Maybe you find that scary, because you’ve been burned by this before. You did good things for people and didn’t get anything in return.
You can.
But that doesn't mean you should quit.
A farmer sows wheat and wants to harvest it, but sometimes it fails. Then the harvest fails because of rain or whatever, but that farmer keeps going. Because the next harvest may be good. Farmers also often rotate the field in which they sow something, but they keep sowing. Then comes a harvest that was the best ever, but if he had stopped it would never have succeeded.
So keep seeding and you will find that there are people who do respond to it as you wish. Most people are fine with you coming to provide value without necessarily wanting anything in return.
Because that's not the point.
You just give it away and just hope people get inspired. Maybe you're a hairdresser and you give away some haircutting tips. That may inspire them to go to your hair salon, maybe not. But you do create opportunities.
Another opportunity is that you may suddenly have more time on your hands. Maybe you’re the kind of person who works twice as hard to keep the country running, but right now I’m addressing those who have more time.
Did you know that worldwide, for example, 90% of students stop going to school[1]?
Then suddenly you’ll have more time to work on your personal development, for example. You can start by watching videos on YouTube or reading all my blogs 😉.
You might want to take an online course or see if you can overcome your own mental blocks.
I find it interesting in myself to give a lot and wonder what blockage is causing something not to flow properly.
There are still all kinds of courses in my closet that I once bought, but never got around to, which I am now picking up anyway so that I can learn from them again. So that when everything is back to normal, that you will be better in all kinds of areas.
In my relationship, I also notice that I talk more than before. I talk more with my wife and children now that there is more time, and this makes the bond even stronger than before.
These are, of course, all investments in a certain context that are going to pay off. Sensationally, I love being home and feel a better and deeper connection. Super valuable, perhaps even more valuable than a business.
The bond with my wife and children is more valuable.
Now I have more time for it—even in my thoughts—because the issues of the day have changed.
So I can do that more now and then I also have to make it a habit so I can continue with it.
Similarly, there may be many areas in your life where you’d like to invest.
This virus and how the government is responding to it also gives us the opportunity to start doing things differently and thinking about things.
These can also be difficult experiences, such as losing your job, loved ones, or relationships. These are terrible situations, but on the other hand, they also present opportunities to deepen your relationships.
Don't have a relationship with another person? Then you can improve your relationship with yourself and with children or friends.
It's obviously very different from seeing each other, but perhaps the conversations are much deeper. Precisely because you are not in the pub.
Then the bond grows stronger and you can benefit from that in the rest of your life.
So I wonder what I can give and how I can add value.
I try to stay very calm under it all and ask myself where I can make a difference. I try to do that with my community, my team, with these blogs, videos and podcasts.
So the opportunity I see is that I am now looking more at where I can be of value.
Of course, I also see danger, but I see more opportunity. I grant you that too, to see more opportunity than danger.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/3332917-deze-crisis-biedt-ook-kansen?play=true
Coping with this crisis depends on a number of factors such as the values you have, the way you think and what you can focus on[2].
Perhaps you’ve read the above and found yourself thinking that you can’t develop yourself, or that YouTube or online courses won’t help you. These are all thoughts that stem from your beliefs about how the world works.
The interesting thing about these times is that we are all in a completely new situation, maybe not the very old people who still lived through the Spanish flu, and so, like children, we have to rediscover the world and re-form an opinion of how it works.
The downside is that we are not in a state of hypnosis. While children up to eight years old are always in hypnosis, which is why they absorb information so quickly.
So how can you, if you are totally depressed by this situation, still do something to see your opportunities in the crisis? You can go into hypnosis. You can go to a hypnotherapist who can help you shift your focus from danger to opportunity.
You can also learn this yourself. For example, do you want to know how hypnosis works? Then come to the free online master class on hypnosis.
Or sign up right away for one of our training programs to learn the techniques of hypnotherapy. It’s great for yourself and if you want to help others—you can even do it online.
Sources:
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0741713620925029
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879120300634