Don't Waste A Good Crisis

I was chatting with my soul sister Maret last week about some of the big decisions she has ahead of her. Her life can go a number of different directions, and that trajectory hinged on how a few critical things played out. As you could expect, Maret was a bit anxious about the uncertainty. And it’s within this context that she said “Don’t waste a good crisis.”

It’s a term I’d never heard before, but it struck me as meaningful. We consciously know that there’s a lot more to learn in the face of stress, failure and challenges than there is when things are going good. It’s in the instances where you fall short that you get insight into your blindspots, weaknesses, and shortcomings - a portal into areas for improvement - that might be the bottleneck to your growth and success. 

Unconsciously, though, it’s a different story. We naturally protect ourselves from failure by making excuses, deflecting responsibility, or rationalizing what happened. And while that’s psychologically safer to do it comes at the expense of becoming more aware of what’s holding you back.

That’s the intention of not wasting a good crisis. When things feel challenging or stressful, use that as a trigger to know that there’s something deeper to learn. That the crisis isn’t there just to make your life hard but to give you or teach you something. You can alchemize hardship into growth when you choose to override your natural response to protect yourself and discover what’s in it for you.

To be fair, there are elements of compulsive productivity in this where you put pressure on yourself to turn every moment into something that’s valuable. Trying to do this in a healthy way, my recommendation is to simply give yourself the space to consider what the lesson might be in the crisis, without expectation for what you do when you see it.

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