It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
It was any other day.
How do we handle a crisis? We’ve been told life is a journey of our own making: Set goals, develop plans, gather resources and make progress. You can get whenever you want. Just discover your why and follow your dreams and you’ll live a life worth living and achieve the things worth having.
Except sometimes life doesn’t play along.
Twenty years ago, on an otherwise sunny day, I got lung cancer. As a twenty-nine year old owner of a small company running at top speed with employees, leases, contracts and commitments, the diagnosis was like hitting a wall. I had just signed the biggest contract of my career; I was days away from a new car, new office and a new apartment. Everything had been planned out - business plan, personal plan, social plan - ready to go with confidence and clarity.
Then unlimited uncertainty showed up at my door.
As the pugilist-philosopher Mike Tyson once said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I remember how the chaos hit me repeatedly: denial, doubt, negotiation, fear. This wasn’t just a case of going out of business: It was the danger of going out of existence.
So I called my mentor.
“First, not every crisis is a failure,” he said. “Don’t take responsibility for not having avoided it or prevented it. This wasn’t anything you could have controlled. You knew there would be problems in life: You just hadn’t considered they wouldn’t be if your own making.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that you’re off the hook.
“The secret is to discover what you CAN do,” my mentor said. “Shift thinking from what you were trying to do, trying to get in the past; even what you worried about a month ago. It simple may not matter. Give yourself permission to start building THE KIND OF person you NEED TO BECOME to handle WHATEVER comes your way. Stop reacting and start acting. That’s your path from panic to power.”
This is what happens when we give up trying to force things “back” to how they once were. When we realize that every day is a point of no “return," we can redirect our energies towards what it will take to beat any challenge - to become better -
Better than ever before!
When I look back at my time after cancer, I realize how fast things changed in my life. Not just reinventing my business but reimagining what was POSSIBLE to accomplish. Trying new ideas, expanding in new ways, making lots of never-imagined mistakes. In a way I’m glad I didn’t get stuck at that time and place I called “normal” back then. I might not have become the person I need to be today - beating cancer a second time, making it through the financial crisis years later, someone able to help others stopped-short in their plans during a pandemic today.
Stop worrying when or whether things will "go back" to normal.
In good times or bad, they never have, and they never will.
Determine how to use ANY day to become your next best self.
The world is always moving beyond business as usual.
Therefore, so should you.
When you realize the secret - that becoming your best happens even during the worst - you start writing a whole new version of your GOOD LIFE.
To paraphrase the last line of that old book:
You become a far, far better You than you have ever been before.