Crisis & Breakthrough

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I have heard that when you are having a crisis you are on the threshold of a breakthrough.

Crisis is a good time to clean up and get organized. Get rid of all the clutter. Clear the way and lighten your load so when you have your epiphany you are ready to roll.

It is amazing what we accumulate over time. It is even more amazing how we are programmed to get even more stuff even while we are trying to unload! That doesn’t make sense.

We collect so much crap for a rainy day. It should be no surprise to discover that the encumbrance of all that crap actually makes our rainy day.

Somehow, no matter what our day is like, we always have all that we need to make it through the day.

It was TV and commercial media that caused us to think otherwise. Even the purveyors of knowledge to achieve abundance are guilty of setting up feeding frenzies, panics that suggest that solutions are in short supply and we must act now or suffer eternal loss. (If that were true, they would be out of business from one successful seminar or sales pitch to the next since the supply and the window of opportunity was past. It never is. It is right there for the  next pitch.)

Since opportunities are always recurring, they are really saying that any time is a good time to make a change and that now is  better than later because now they have your attention and have swayed your mindset and later you could be back asleep drifting through your life instead of making the most of it.

It takes a leap of faith to jump before you feel you have examined every possible ramification of that action, but imagine how you traverse a crowded space, let’s say Grand Central Station at rush hour.

You stand high on a landing and look across a sea of people. Your goal is the opposite side of the vast station.

You notice a construction zone blocked off in one area. You notice people moving in streams. You assess all htat you see from this general vantage point and then start down the stairs to embark on your journey across the chaotic sea in constant flux.

Sometimes you move forward quickly, sometimes you bump into people. Your path is anything but a straight line, but you weave your way across the space and eventually come close to your goal. A few more corrections and you are there.

There is no way you could have foreseen all the details, encounters and adjustments you would actually make once you were under way, but you had a target, you kept the vision of your target in your mind as you proceeded and you continued until your goal was met.

You boarded your train on the far side of the station, took a seat and gave no further thought to the magic of how you and thousands of other people navigated through and among each other, each to get where you wanted to go.

The person sitting next to you on the train was someone you saw on the same landing where both of you began your journey. They went an entirely different way than you to cross the station and yet, here you are, both together again on the fast train to your next destinations.

sometimes we think too much. We get bogged down in the details. There are really only a few very basic principles that need to be considered in order to achieve anything:

1.) You must choose a target, a goal.

People who climb the biggest mountains in the world have incremental goals. They don’t just fly to Tibet and climb to the top of Everest. They learn. They train. They aim for base village, then for base camp, then for the higher camps, and finally for Everest.

Scaling your goals to your abilities helps to avoid early discouragement. However, always aim high. Push your limits. Aim for the top of the mountain. Fail at halfway up and you are still further up than when you started.

You are now halfway across Grand Central Station. Remember your ultimate goal. Pick yourself up after a rest at the refreshment stand and proceed.

2.) You must start. Start slowly. Start poorly. Start tired. But start.

If you get confused or lost in the crowd, ask for help to get your bearings and proceed. If you are late and miss your train, there will be another one. It might not leave until tomorrow, but there will be another one. If you were late for this one, you will already be in place and early for the next train.

Psycho-Cybernetics is a book that tells us how to recognize how we can cross a crowded station and place faith in and optimize that ability. You put one foot in front of the next and make minor corrections along the way.

It’s like driving a car.If you took your hands off the steering wheel you would eventually run off the road or run into something – even on a straight road. You keep your hands on the wheel to make minor corrections as you go and eventually you get where you wanted to go.

So, welcome your crisis. get rid of all your excess baggage. Look across the crowded station and initiate the walk toward your train.A well-chosen train can speed you forward on the next leg of your journey.