Arturo and I have had our share of crises in our 39 years as a family. When you experience an emergency, you don’t always know what to do or what direction to go. One of the biggest lessons we have learned is to do two things when something unexpected arises.
- Survive. I don’t know about you, but when I experience a crisis, I immediately want to go back to my routine. To what’s familiar. That is a natural reaction. However, we have found that it is more helpful to stop what we are doing and evaluate what in our routine has to absolutely be done to survive. Eliminating the non-urgent gives us space and time to focus on the crisis at hand. Take a financial crisis, for example. When income is halted, it’s time to freeze all non-essential spending. Focus on getting the urgent paid. Food, mortgage, gas and utilities are usually the most important in every household. Only those things needed to survive should be paid. Cancel everything else.
- Stabilize. Once we are in survival mode, we can evaluate our options so that we can stabilize our situation. Once your survival needs are met, you can think more clearly about what your options are. In the example above, do you need to look for another job? Do you need a temporary second job? What are your options, who can help you and how much time do you have?
Crises come to all of us. Pretending that we can just push through without acknowledging it only leaves us exposed to a deeper crisis. Surviving and stablizing will help us ride it out more effectively.