Adjusting to change – any change - has never been easy. And to have change at a global level – change that rewrites almost every area of our lives – work, school, leisure can be absolutely devastating. Yet, as we can see in the Chinese character for the word “crisis” – in every dangerous situation lies opportunities as well.
I have been a stress management consultant and trainer for many years and one of the things I used to share with my participants is to take care of four areas – Perceptions, Autonomy, Connectiveness and Tone, what I call PACT, to turn stress into positive energy.
But now, in these months of extreme stress – when the whole world is turned upside down with the pandemic – can this apply? Let’s have a peek.
Perception
“Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by day in the thousand small, uncaring ways.” – Steven Saint Vincent Benet
This brings us back to how crisis can open up doors to new opportunities and possibilities. When the world started getting into lockdown, there were many who were frozen with fear and uncertainty, even anger and resentment. There were others who caught the ball and just started running for their lives. Some businesses went bankrupt while others made quick adaptations and thrived.
One example is the health supplement business – we heard of the big giant GNC closing stores worldwide and going bankrupt in many countries. Meanwhile, at least one company we know of – PM-International who also supplies food and nutritional supplements see amazing growth. Their Singapore subsidiary saw 70 per cent growth over the same period last year.
Their General Manager of the Singapore subsidiary, Patrick YC Lim says, “We have to look at things from a different perspective when crisis comes and to take immediate steps to turn things around. Although we had to close our outlet to walk-in customers, we moved the bulk of orders to online and delivery.”
“We also moved our live training for our distributors to Zoom webinars, and to our surprise the attendance for these online sessions were double or tripled that of pre-Covid19 live meetings!”
I am reminded of a story I heard long ago. Once upon a time, there lived a wise old man in a village. One day, a precocious young boy decided to trick the old man and show the people in the village that he was not so smart after all. The little boy caught a little bird, showed the bird to the old man, and asked him, “Is this bird dead or alive?”
The old man says, “The answer lies in your hands. If I say it’s alive, you will squeeze it so it will die. If I says it’s dead, you will release it and let it fly away.”
The answer lies in your hand. As Victor Frankl declared in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human’s freedom – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
From the first day of the lockdown in Singapore, I chose to make use of this time to learn, to re-engineer the way my training and coaching business was run. I brought everything online and even launched a new certification program for health coaches, which is now in its second intake. I moved my corporate wellness programs online and managed to close a huge contract with an MNC that is the biggest my company has ever had in 11 years – all totally online.
For me and my business, the crisis did indeed have a silver lining – without my clients’ willingness to be coached and trained online, we would have had to spend more time travelling and would never be able to do what we can do now – do two or three webinars a day!
It only takes a simple change in perspective for your whole world to change; just a snap of the fingers. The decision to see things in a positive or negative light. To feel anger and frustration, or to feel energized to take action. To spend these precious few months moaning and groaning or watching Netflix day and night, or take this as a time to learn new skills, rethink your life, rechart your course and take the necessary action. It’s your choice.
Autonomy
More often than not, people get stressed out when they feel the control has been taken out of their hands. How true in this season. No one knows or can predict when things will get back to the way they were before – maybe never. People are losing jobs as businesses that don’t adapt fast enough close. The economy looks gloomy.
So how do we regain some element of control in our life?
Here are some steps that I would like to suggest:
1. Acknowledge the Crisis.
Losing a job can create as much emotional turmoil as losing a loved one. One may go through the different stages of loss, from denial to anger and depression, before acceptance comes.
I know one 45-year old man who lost his high-paying job of 15 years. Initially, he refused to accept that he was now facing a professional crisis. He dismissed the whole situation as “just a bad patch,” blamed it all on an “incompetent boss” and was confident that the ex boss would soon be begging him to rejoin the company. “I’m not going to worry about it now. When things get back to normal, he will be asking me to come back as he can’t survive without me.”
Two months after, when it finally dawned on him that his ex boss was not going to call him back, and in fact, the company was likely to close for good, he became consumed with anger. He started bad-mouthing his former employer. When he first came to me, he was already in the depression stage. He couldn’t accept what was happening to him.
I told him that the first step towards moving forward was to acknowledge that he was indeed facing a crisis. He was now 45, the only source of income for his family, an expatriate living in a country that he and his family has grown to get used to living in. With the current climate, it was not going to be easy for him to get another job that pays him as well. Once he acknowledges this crisis, he can then choose how to respond to it.
2. Explore the Options
While the Chinese looks at “crisis” as danger interlinked with opportunity, the Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a time of intense difficulty or danger; a turning point for better or worse.” The origin comes from the Greek word krisis which means decision.
Whichever way we choose to look at it, onne unifying theme defines it. A crisis serves as a wake-up call to alert us to both danger (and turmoil) arising out of non-synchronicity in our lives, as well as opportunities that can lead to greater things. The eventuality depends on the choices we make.
So, take this pandemic as an opportunity to step back and detach yourself from the situation, take a new, fresh look at what you really want for your life and then make the move forward to the life you deserve.
3. Redefine Your Purpose and Passion
How many people really take the time to press then Pause button in order to explore what is their true passion and purpose? That’s precisely one BIG positive I see with this world crisis – many have little choice but to press then pause button.
So count your blessings if you are one of those who received this wake-up call – just don’t waste this opportunity!
As David Zerloss, author of Stress is a Choice says: “Many of us hurry through life going from one place to the next, focused on conquering the next mountain, making the next deal, running the next errand, and believing we will never have enough timed to do all the things we need to get done. Yet there is all the time in the world if we just realize that we are the creators of this life we choose to live.”
Connectiveness
“Shared joy is double joy, and shared sorrow is half sorrow.” – Swedish proverb
Social distancing is certainly a part of the new normal today, and rightly so. But this does not mean we should cut our connections. Absolutely not! In fact, it is in these times, that we must keep connected to friends and family, and even make new connections to sustain us. And with so many online options today, it’s no excuse to isolate ourselves.
I make it a point to connect with my family who are living far away from me, in fact, we do this more often now then before, over Zoom and have so much fun chatting with each other – everyone talking at the same time! I also make it a point to call my older relatives who are not so internet savvy just to chat with them and check on them.
I also organised a Zoom birthday party in May for myself with the theme “Jungle Party” and got my guests to dress up in jungle gear. I had a guest “deejay,” one of my guests doing a dance performance and another one singing. We played games and had a prize for Best Dressed. It was amazing, as my guests were not only from Singapore, but also Malaysia and Australia.
Tone
“Fitness – if it came in a bottle, everyone would have a great body.”- Cher
And last but not least, make sure you keep yourself physical fit and healthy. If you are not eating right or overeating during this period, neglecting your exercise, you will find yourself feeling sluggish, lack of energy and perhaps slump into depression and desperation. One of the things I have observed during this period is that more people are becoming home cooks, which is great. However, the question is: Are you also making a conscious shift to cooking healthylicious meals?
To get into the right tone, you need to be mindful of two areas – Diet and exercise. There are no short cuts to good health and feeling good.
By eating properly – good nourishing and nutritious food, and exercising at least 20 minutes three or four times a week, you will feel like a new person – I guarantee you! You will have more energy to do the things you want to do, you will sleep better, you will look and feel better.
So go on, life is for living – don’t let a virus rob you of what you were meant to bed. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain – a fulfilled life with no regrets.
