In times of crisis, it’s easy to say, “we will emerge stronger from it.”
This can certainly be true. Often, people and systems do emerge more resilient after challenging times.
But this is a passive stance. It assumes that the crisis will magically take care of the post-traumatic growth by itself.
An active stance to crisis has a very different flavor to it.
To have an active stance is to use the crisis. You receive every challenging situation as an invitation to rise up.
You view the crisis as a mirror, that constantly asks you questions about who you are.
Under high stress, how do I make decisions?
When plans get changed, how do I react?
When tensions mount in my organization, how capable am I of holding people’s discomfort?
When I feel fear, how much inner space do I have to respond rather than react?
When faced with uncertainty, do I numb myself out of the action and pretend that I’m above it all? Or do I allow myself to feel the distress around me?
Am I able to really feel what is going on within me and outside of me?
Who am I really? Who do I aspire to become? And what world do I hope to create?
A crisis asks us these questions. And it invites us to answer them with our actions and our lives.
This is the moment.
