Has Life Thrown Too Many Crises Your Way!

The past few years have been really tough for me personally. In 2019, I was forced to move out of my home of 25 years and downsize. In 2020, the pandemic hit which pushed everyone to the brink. In 2021, I had a bike accident that broke my hip and injured both legs. I had 4 surgeries, including at total hip replacement to recover. This year my condo was flooded by the person that lives upstairs from me. It caused massive destruction where my walls and floors had to be replaced. Over the last 5 months, I have been living in hotels and cleaning up major weekly messes that contractors have left. Talk about circumstances just draining the zeal from my life! Have you ever felt like it is one thing after another and you just can’t keep up with the number of crises in your life? You put one fire out only to face another and wonder when will it stop?

Be Good to Yourself

The major thing that helped me through every crisis was getting back to the basics and not neglecting myself. Now when a crisis happens, I immediately clear my life of everything that was not completely necessary. Instead of worrying about tomorrow and the future, I just take everything one step at a time. Staying present in the moment during a crisis is hard, but if I don't, I know the anxiety increases and I switch into hamster mode. I get back on the hamster wheel and begin running myself ragged. If you are in a crisis, make sure you get back to your basics of getting the sleep, food, mindfulness, and exercise you need. Take it easy on yourself and let go of perfectionism and trying to be all things to all people. Pick only the essentials and say “no” to everything else. As the crisis settles down, slowly step by step, add things back into your life.

Don’t feed into the "poor me" drama:

Reacting with drama is an easy way out when you have so many bad things that continuously happen in your life. I felt picked on like the powers that be had it out for me! I was getting angry and tired of these drastic upheavals. I began to develop the attitude of, “Why me?” When was I going to get a break? But with every crisis I realized I had choices. Nobody was going get me out of the crisis but me. I could sit in my pity party or begin to plan my response and get moving toward finding answers. I began to plan and make lists of who to call and what had to be done. Sometimes getting out of bed was all I could do! But for the most part, each day I did something to get through the crisis. I have to tell you my confidence grew with each step toward recovery out of every crisis. 

Take Charge 

I don’t know about you, but when I feel overwhelmed by a crisis, I switch into “fixit mode.” Often it is not a well thought out mode either. I am randomly running around like a chicken without a head and reacting to my circumstances. I allow the circumstances to control me instead of taking charge and controlling the circumstances. But having so many recent other crises helped me a lot. I definitely had bouts of despair and craziness but for the most part, I was able to take a step back and objectively begin to plan the steps needed to get through it. One good thing about having so many crises, is I knew there was a finish line and inch by inch I would get there.

It has been almost 5 months since the flood and I am not done yet, but I have made tremendous progress toward getting there! Crises are horrible but I can say having been though so many of them back to back, I have developed a pattern of response that has helped me get through them more successfully. If you are in crisis mode, don’t feed into the drama, take charge of the things you can control, and give yourself a break! Get back to the basics, get rid of nonessentials, and begin to write a doable plan to get you out of the jungle and back into life!

Share below your what you have done when in crisis mode below!