| Any
crisis is even more difficult to anticipate,
understand and prepare ahead for than everyday
life. This is why you need to be flexible,
diversified, alertly informed, and positive but
practical in your attitude and behavior.
Your plans
and actions should be somewhat similar to what you
would do if you heard that a bad hurricane or
forest fire is possibly heading your way sometime
soon. It is instructive to read accounts of the
few people who successfully handled hurricane
Katrina’s onslaught of the greater New Orleans
area. These smart people did not trust the
optimistic official weather forecast. Instead they
“over-prepared” for the worst and thereby
greatly minimized the consequences they suffered.
As a
potential threat approaches closer, you must
escalate your emergency preparations into high
gear as early as possible just in case. There may
even come a time when you must decide how much you
will abandon for the sake of survival, like
leaving your home to fate in order to go to a
public shelter. There is a limited window of
opportunity to act wisely at each level of crisis
threat. Before things get bad, it is easy to do
this or do that and change your mind several
times, even procrastinate. Yet, if the crisis gets
bad or worse, it is often dangerous or impossible
to do even the simplest of tasks. In a bad crisis,
you will suddenly be swept along with everyone
else by the tidal wave—unless you have prepared
exceedingly well in advance.
Great plans
and preparation far ahead of time is crucial, but
only stage or phase one of your successful
management of a crisis. Stage two is wisely
adapting to new information about the changing,
unforeseen circumstances that inevitably occur.
The less you have to manage and worry about, the
easier it will be for you to bend in the wind. If
your priority is safeguarding your wealth,
possessions and good lifestyle, you may overlook
sudden developments threatening you or your family’s
safety or welfare. The less you have, the more
freedom of action is often possible. The less you
have on your mind, the more efficient your
response time is to changes in the world around
you.
The final
stage in managing a crisis occurs after the crisis
has peaked and some “normalcy” begins to
slowly return. The worse the crisis, the more you
will be grateful for love, happiness and simple
goodness for years to come. During this time,
quiet courage is needed to accept the many
compromises and sacrifices that continue to be
necessary. Follow the example of young children
who rarely see any present moment—no matter how
challenging--as a loss of what was. Celebrate each
moment as another different opportunity. |