How to Be Ready for a Crisis – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

What’s your plan if everything changes overnight?

Photo by Johannes Plenio from Pexels

Living through a deeply tragic episode recently has made me reflect on the different ways people face a crisis and come out the other side. I don’t think we’re ever fully ready for one, but there’s always a way through.

The word crisis can feel overwhelming. Still, I believe it’s a chance to come out stronger, with fresh perspectives that make us better and bring out the best in us. When we talk about a crisis, what comes to mind? A financial crisis? Losing a job? Whatever the difficulty, I think the biggest worry is the fear of failure and of not having the tools to prevent it or get out of it.

We all have the ability and the answers to move forward in life regardless of adversity and circumstances. It’s in our nature and in our DNA.

What do all crises have in common? Here’s what I’ve lived and learned:

• Lessons learned: learning from the past. We have a stock of personal strategies that have worked for us again and again, and they’re there for us to use. The key is to recognize them, know how to question our past and reflect on the hard times we’ve already lived and how we got through them
• Creating our future: this means dreaming constantly about what we want and refusing to leave it as just an idea. We have to turn it into a plan, goals and tasks, and take steps every day to make it real. The beauty of imagining our future is that it opens paths in our mind that may be clouded today for many reasons. Daring to dream and fighting for it every day creates a cycle of wellbeing and achievement that later becomes a habit
• Having a plan (or plans): options are life jackets that keep us from drowning. They should always fit our vision of the future and our values, and choosing them in time will help us get around obstacles. Nobel economist Harry Markowitz coined the phrase "Diversification is the only free lunch"
• Faith: whatever the situation, everything has a reason, "everything happens for a reason." It’s vital to be aware that there’s a Higher Power, and that whatever we’re living, however stormy, has meaning in our lives. Over time that meaning will show itself in a thousand ways, simplifying our lives and helping us find happiness where there was none before
• Resilience: we all have the capacity to push our lives, bodies and minds to the limit. That can happen by choice or not. When it happens without our asking, it’s important to be clear that we have the talent to find a better path, a better solution that will (at some point) bring us back, perhaps to a stronger, more mature place than where we started, with more lessons and strategies learned

Are you prepared for a crisis? How have you handled them in the past?

A big hug and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

"If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential." Ray Dalio, Principles: Life and Work

― Ray Dalio, Principles: Life and Work

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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