Positive Psychology
Transform Crisis Into Opportunity
By Telka Arend-Ritter L.M.S.W.
Mar 9, 2008

Six Key Ingredients: Transform Crisis into Opportunity

Emotional healing requires the ability to calm, defuse, reframe and then to eventually, learn from emotional pain. Every stressful experience offers the opportunity to practice emotional healing. Consider how you may transform a crisis into an opportunity by practicing the lessons below.

1. Balance.
Lives without balance are burdened with chaos.. “More” is not always better. Sometimes it is just more-too many hours worked, too many scheduled activities, too much noise, too much clutter, too many credit cards, too much time on computers, TV or phone, too many nights out, too many expectations, and too much “people pleasing”. Lives based on self-neglect also create imbalance-no time for yourself, not enough sleep, feeling guilty or selfish if you do take time, no energy to get organized, no goals set and no idea what you need. An imbalanced life often fluctuates between “too much” and “not enough.” Alcoholics Anonymous refers to chaotic lifestyles causing people to become “sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.” People who are accustomed to chaos or neglect may have no idea how to create balance. “Balance” may seem boring when drama and upheaval are absent.
A balanced life refers to:
* A life prioritized by alignment of actions with values.
* A life lived with purpose and intention.

2. Responsibility
You learn the lesson of responsibility “ability to choose your response” when old excuses do not work anymore and there is no one left to blame. Crisis is transformed into a coping skill by the knowledge that you have choices. You may not choose what happens to you, but you always choose your response to what happens. No one understood this concept better than Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), the Austrian psychiatrist who wrote about his experience as a survivor of the Nazi prison camps. In his 1963 book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed human responses to incredible, indescribable levels of stress.
"Everything can be taken from a man but ...the last of the human freedoms –
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Viktor Frankl
3. Creating meaning/purpose
People often choose to suffer incredible physical or emotional stress when they believe that doing so will serve a purpose. (Think of fire fighters, soldiers, emergency room staff, etc). However, without meaning or purpose, that same suffering becomes an unhealthy stress. Jewel Kilcher’s song Deep Water speaks to this type of stress: “And you wake up to realize your standard of living somehow got stuck on survive.”
Transforming crisis into opportunity requires that you create a meaning or a purpose to every stressful event. Christopher Reeves (1952-2004), who suffered a spinal cord injury during a fall in 1995, was asked in an interview if he thought his accident had happened for a reason. Mr. Reeve’s response was essentially that he viewed his fall as a freak accident, but that he believed it was his responsibility to create purpose and bring meaning to the events of his life.
Rabbi Harold Kushner’s 1981 best selling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People described how to overcome the temptation to dwell on blame or guilt during times of crisis. Rather than becoming lost forever in the tragedy of his young son’s illness and eventual death, Rabbi Kushner wrote inspirational books that continue to help millions of readers. He said, “In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.” The greater the stress level, the greater the opportunity to strengthen coping skills. Seek role models who have triumphed over incredible hardship.
4. Self-discipline
Acknowledging your unhealthy stress presents an opportunity to learn self-discipline. Self-discipline refers to self-control and impulse control. Self-discipline requires you to say “no” to yourself when saying “yes” would be self-destructive or immoral. Without self-discipline, self-trust is impossible. Self-discipline aligns your actions with your values. It allows you to “Be the change you seek” (Gandhi).
You demonstrate self-discipline by maintaining balance, taking responsibility and creating meaning in your life.
5. Self-acceptance
“I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” Groucho Marx
Many people refuse to take responsibility for the stress and chaos caused by their lack of self-acceptance. They remain stuck in blame or victim thinking by claiming, “Other people judge them or reject them.” Some people attempt to heal problems with self-acceptance by hiding behind a mask of arrogance, conceit or perfectionism. A problem with self-acceptance is never solved by insisting others must adore you. Self-acceptance requires choosing to honor your own “human-ness” complete with mistakes, flaws and imperfections. Stress caused by the lack of self-acceptance is healed only by your decision to believe that you are “good enough” or “worthy enough.” Self-acceptance is an inside job.

6. Letting Go
Transforming crisis and stress into a coping skill requires acceptance of the fact that you cannot control other people, places or things. This transformation is easier said than done. Some people mistakenly believe that unless control is maintained at all times, “all hell will break loose.” However, let us think about this logically. If you were stuck in hell, wouldn’t you prefer it to break loose? Effective stress management does not require maintaining ultimate control (because ultimate control does not exist). Once every solution is implemented and every right action is taken, it is time to detach from the outcome. It is time to let go. The final tool for managing stress is found in the wisdom to know when to let go.
"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference."
--Reinhold Niebuhr