How do you deal with adverse situations?
With calmness, with anxiety, with cold-bloodedness, by feeling victimized…or by attacking the situation itself?
How?
Consider this for example – you have got a bad day. You had your most important tasks to complete and you had something else to do. Things were going otherwise fine but you were dragged into an already lost battle.
You somehow did all that you had to and were able to somehow “manage” the situation and then you get news that one more of your projects has gone haywire.
And you start thinking, “This always happens to me.” This person doesn’t listen to me and that person always does what she wants to.
It happens with all of us to some extent in our lives, isn’t it?
Most people don’t handle such situations well and get upset. Not only just they get upset, they indirectly contribute to making their near ones upset.
My invitation to all of them is to pause and reflect on what Stephen Covey said,
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.”
By not blindly obeying to the most obvious response to what has happened, let’s choose our response today.
Let’s get clear on this – our most obvious response is just one way of dealing with adverse situations, there are many other possibilities if we really “think” about it by detaching us from its outcome.
For a smart person, every adversity is an opportunity. Let’s choose to be smart today. Let’s refuse to feel victimized. Let’s look at the adversities with an alternative thinking approach.
The power is within us. Other people or situations can make us feel victimized only if we allow them to.
Here are a few tips to stay motivated regardless of the adverse situation:
- Pause for a minute.
- Detach yourself with the outcome of what has happened.
- See what is the “right” thing to do in the given situation.
- See if you can do the right thing right away.
- If you can do it, start focusing on doing it.
- If you cannot do it, then see what best you can do instead.
- Have some plan, it doesn’t have to be a perfect one but just enough plan to start dealing with the situation.
- Remind yourself before starting the actions that the plan you think is right is right.
- Pause for a minute before starting the execution as per the plan.
- Start executing the plan.
- Don’t worry much about whether it will be successful or not. No one can guarantee success. All you need to do is to just focus on the best thing that you can do.
- While the plan is being executed, stay motivated. Not because you have got a great plan and you are certain that you will be successful but because of the fact that you didn’t give up to what happened to you and fighting to make it work again.
- Be grateful to your this very act because this is what the majority of people who are in adverse situations don’t do.
- So now you’re in minority of people who make a difference, that itself is news to feel good about.
- Depending upon the situation, keep revisiting your plan and make alterations as needed.
The situation may or may not turn out favorable but the point is, if you think good, you feel good. And someone had said, “Every moment is life in a minuscule.” At least you gave yourself a few minutes of the good life by doing this exercise.
Our reality is created by our thoughts, incoming thoughts may be good or not so good but how we react to it is certainly in our hands and that’s what makes us powerful. We just have to learn to leverage that power.
