No matter how healthy, wealthy, or wise we are, crisis happens. The marriage ends. Your dog dies. A global pandemic brings your world to a frightening collapse and an uncertain recovery.
Big or small, in this together or solo, crises are a first cousin to that other inevitable thing in life: change.
Sometimes, we make the change happen. Often times, the change happens to us. In either case, the how or why of the change or crisis doesn’t really matter. What matters most is how you respond to your crisis.
There it is. Ive just told you the secret of happiness. Now mix yourself a cool one, and take it to a safe outdoor space along with my highlights of Laura Day’s interesting and important book, “Welcome to Your Crisis: How To Use the Power of Crisis to Create the Life you Want.”
(It’s not a perfect book. She likes to repeat herself, but she’s very good at explaining something we all need to hear, over and over again.)
CHANGE AS OPPORTUNITY. “All change is an opportunity to open the possibilities of your life,” writes Laura Day, who came through a lot of crises in her own life: parent’s divorce, mom’s suicide, unsatisfying marriage, her own divorce, a costly custody battle and topping the parade of horribles, no obvious source of income.
Instead of allowing her life to drag her down, Laura Day found a way, her way, to embrace and understand change. She saw it as growth, a challenge put in her path so she could test how ready she was to become her most authentic self.
Laura Day came through her crises so well, and learned so much, she began teaching other people how to cope.
Cope isn’t really the right word. Too passive. In this book and with her clients, Laura Day teaches a strategy for actively, consciously managing your change, your crisis, so you move through it step-by-step, realization-by-realization, without becoming a depressed, misshapen, pill-popping victim along the way.
“Unless we adapt ourselves to change,” says Laura Day, “we can experience anger, anxiety, and possibly even depression. We can become paralyzed, frozen indefinitely in the moment between who we are and who we might become.”
Who we might become? Yes! Your life is a story you make up for yourself, so why not live out the best possible story you can?
(Feeling lost? Google “You create your own reality,” and read what modern-day physicists have proven and Buddhists have known all along.)
“Once you’ve completed your updated story, try living it out,” she advises. “You don’t have to believe your new story for it to work; you just have to pretend. … You will notice immediate and dramatic change in your life.”
Promise?
“I have seen thousands of people in my career from the inside out,” writes Day, “and every person amazes me in his or her marvelous originality. When we live through our authenticity, the part of us that is uniquely ours, we create exactly the life we want.”
If you’re interested in creating exactly the life you want — a scary but delicious possibility – there are many paths, and reading Laura Day’s book could be one of them. She has others as well, but the thing that makes them work if your willingness to commit, and be responsible, and do ALL the exercises. If you can find a supportive, intimate group to do them with you, all the better.
THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO FALL APART. Putting my own COVID related crises aside for a few moments, here are some of the passages I underlined — in ink! Recite them to yourself before you go to bed at night for the next 10 years and observe your growth:
— “Remember: crisis is an opportunity for dramatic, positive change. Things are supposed to fall apart, to bring you to a better place. Those who don’t see life that way remain stuck in endings.”
— “When we experience all the crushing pain and torment of traumatic events, having the perspective to find the blessing in disguise is no easy task. When I lost my mother, it took me years to realize fully the compensations the universe had provided me.”
— “If the outward aspects of your life are going well — your job, your relationships, your lifestyle — but the feeling gnaws at you that something is wrong or missing, there’s a good chance your life is in crisis.”
See why this is important? COVID-19 is a crisis of epic proportions but it’s not the last crisis in your life. There will be more. The sooner you acquire some of the skills required to tell yourself a better story, the less you will suffer. So they say.
ENERGY EXPRESS-O! HOW’S THIS FOR A HAPPY STORY?
“You have the power to create positive lasting change in your life, You are deciding right now, in this moment, what your future will be.” –
– – Laura Day, who else?