5 Ways to Keep Going in Times of Crisis

Human lives are complicated entities. We all need many elements of life to survive and to thrive but when some kind of crisis occurs, it is very easy to get fixated on the one area that is most affected and forget that there is more to life than any single aspect of it.

Life is a Complex Web of Needs

We all have some very basic human needs - health, food, shelter, clothing, human contact and so on. If one of those needs isn’t being met then we aren’t even surviving, let alone thriving. But once those basic needs are met there are other needs over the top and these will vary from person to person. Most people value money/materialism in some way - a career, a home, a car and so on. Most people have needs for intimate relationships, family & friends. Some people need to be very physical, perhaps in some kind of sport. Others have a strong need for religion or spirituality etc.

Whatever our needs are, when something happens to damage one of them such as loss of a relationship or job, or even worse - a loss that affects several of them at once, it causes us to suffer greatly and it feels like our whole world is collapsing. Unfortunately in times of crisis like this we find it difficult to see what is still working in our lives because all we can see at this time is our problem area which feels all-consuming.

Here are 4 ideas that may help keep you going through these hard times:

1) Never Lose Hope

The past is over, the future does not exist, all there really is, is now. But when your now feels bad, how do you get through the day? Hope.

Hope is the one thing that you should keep at the front of your mind whenever you feel really low. You just never know what is around the corner. There are hundreds of stories of people who seemed to be facing circumstances that offered no hope and yet some kind of salvation or solution arose that could never have been predicted.

We have to have hope that things will not always be as they are, that life will get better, and that we’ll find a way through the crisis and find the happiness at the end of it. Without hope, we are lost! Never lose hope, you just never know what today will bring.

2) Work on the Unaffected Areas of Your Life

When a crisis first descends upon us, it feels as though nothing else matters, but if we can stop for just a moment and think about it, we know that’s not true. For example, the feeling that nothing else matters often arises after the loss of a loved one. People going through this stop caring about their jobs, their health and so on but deep down they know that if their loved ones were still with them, those things would be important.

What is important to us is a very individual thing - everybody is different and it usually changes over time as we age. It can be a useful exercise to have a look at your own life and pick out the elements that are important to you, and rate each of them on a scale of say 1-10 where 0 is the absolute worst possible scenario and 10 is ‘living the dream’. The chances are that even if there’s an area which is at a zero which is causing you massive pain right now, there are other areas that are much better. Now forget about the areas that you’re having the real problems with and look at the areas that are okay, can they be even better?

For example, let’s say you’ve lost your life partner and rate your relationship a 0 and that is causing you pain - how is your health and your career? Whilst they may be suffering a little due to your overall state of mind, they aren’t necessarily related to your relationship status. You could try to forget about your lack of relationship and work on your career for a while. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. You’ve lost your job but you’re married - can you make your marriage even better? Can you make more friends? Can you work on your health? Those other areas do matter, and when we see life as a whole interconnecting sum of parts, even if we lose a part - a lot of it is still there.

3) Fill Your Days With Good Feeling Moments

What is the real purpose of life? Whilst entire books have been written on that subject, I hope one thing that all readers of this blog will agree on is that life should feel GOOD! :-) No matter what we are doing in life, it needs to be enjoyable for us. We often face times of particular difficulty or hardship perhaps upon the arrival of a new baby or the start of a new business or any number of other circumstances. But even during the most trying times I believe that it is imperative that we try to do something that makes us feel good each and every day without exception. When going through a crisis, at the beginning it might be the only thing that gets us through the day.

What feels good to you? There are big things and little things and lots of things in between. Big things might include a nice holiday or something adventurous and little things may include soaking in a luxurious bath, eating chocolate cake, spending time with a friend or watching a favourite movie but find your feel good stuff. Make a list of all the things that feel good to you and make the effort to incorporate them daily. Then even if everything else seems like it is heading south at least we know there is a little bit of joy to be had every day which gives us another reason to keep going through our crisis.

4) Find the Lesson

There’s a saying that everything that happens to us in life happens for a reason and our hard times come to us in order to teach us something. Once we learn the lesson, we don’t have to keep repeating the experience. So, as the theory goes, as long as we keep fighting against the situation and can gain no benefit from it, we’re doomed to continue to endure it but once we can find the hidden lesson within the experience, we should find a way out of it.

I’m sure we’ve all had experiences in our past that were highly traumatic at the time but with the benefit of hindsight we could see something positive that arose out of the trauma. The difficult thing to do is to try and find the benefit or the lesson whilst we are in the midst of the crisis itself. If there is something, anything, that can be positive about the experience we can hang on to that and it helps us find a little bit of meaning to get through the days.

5) Meditate to Find Inner Peace

Perhaps this should actually be top of the list and not the bottom because if we were able to find true inner peace, then we would not even suffer in the first place. Perhaps the best known for this are Buddhists who are able to remain peaceful and calm amidst all circumstances. They want for nothing and they do not suffer.

Most of our pain comes from some kind of loss, or the inability to gain something which is really the same thing as loss - they both boil down to an attachment to something outside of ourselves. It doesn’t matter whether that attachment is to something material such as a home, or a person, or something intangible such as a reputation or political position. It is the loss of something to which we are attached or the inability to gain something to which we are attached which causes us pain. If we could truly let go of our attachments then we would not suffer.

However I put this at the bottom of the list as this is an extremely difficult thing for most Westeners to do, including myself. For me, I have made a commitment to finding this inner peace but for all I know, it might take a lifetime so while I’m waiting for that, I’ll work on the other four!

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