Every now and then, life will throw something at you that you least expect. It could be a serious health challenge, a bombshell in a close personal relationship or a threat to your livelihood and way of living. We all know of someone who had been fit and healthy all their lives only to receive a shock diagnosis of a life threatening disease. You will often hear of seemingly happy couples splitting up abruptly when one of the partners tells the other those dreaded words.. “ I am leaving you “ . And unfortunately, right now, there are millions of employees and business owners all around the world scrambling to find a way to cope with the loss of jobs and revenue brought on so suddenly by the coronavirus.
No matter what the crisis, that short sharp shock will leave you reeling and life will never be the same for you again. It will never be the same, but that doesn’t does necessarily mean it will be worse for you. One of the central themes of this book is that the bad stuff that may happen to you is often for good reasons. Problems should be thought of as challenges to find the right solutions and a crisis should be viewed as an opportunity for personal growth and much needed change in your life. Part of this process is to accept that to under fundamental change means to change many aspects of yourself.
During a crisis we are forced to consider how we have arrived at this point and then reflect on how we can best move forward. To move on, you have to let go of the past. If your self concept and your self esteem are heavily wrapped up in your job, your income, your lifestyle, then you will painful adjustments to make if all of that is suddenly ripped out from under you. Remember what Rick Warren said in his book The Purpose Driven Life, “your valuables are not the same as your value “ . In order to progress quickly to a better future, it is necessary to shed your old skin. Accept that you are now in a new reality and that your past self no longer serves you. I went through this process myself when I lost everything through bankruptcy less than 6 years ago. I had to reframe my image of myself from a person who saw himself as a vibrant and ambitious business person to someone who, because of his own mistakes, was forced to start again from scratch at age 45. Now that certainly was not an easy thing to do but it would have been so much more painful if I was still desperately clinging on to my old persona. Your new skin is what you need right now as you enter in to the next exciting phase of your life. Letting go of your old skin, your past, your mistakes and failures will free up your energy and liberate your mind to make better choices in the future.
