How do you cope with crises? Have you been lucky, i.e. your sector has been spared? Or have you deployed a system that makes you inherently resilient and keeps your head above water?
Let’s see together what kind of mindset you need to maintain in order to face present and future crises with greater resilience.
Curiosity
Observation is a quality that you owe it to yourself to cultivate at the risk of creating a bubble that prevents you from seeing the world as it really is. If you tend to cultivate a self in which you only meet people who are by definition like you, you are exposing yourself to a crisis. Get into the habit of questioning your certainties by travelling, not as a tourist, but in a sustainable way. The clash of cultures, languages and ways of thinking will stimulate your thinking.
Are you stuck in a dead end?
Is your career threatened in the short or medium term because you have positioned yourself in a sector whose activity is under threat or is undergoing upheaval?
If so, take the lead by rotating your skills so that they adapt to the evolution of your sector and can be valued in other sectors.
Have you built your career around unfounded certainties?
If you don’t question yourself often, you’re in danger. Review your certainties regularly. Put yourself in the shoes of an enemy who would like to harm you professionally or disrupt your sector. Have you trained yourself to reinforce this gift of ubiquity? Do you have the ability to put yourself in the shoes of your opponents in order to be “ahead of the game”? If you don’t, change your ways of thinking today and commit yourself to these introspective efforts.
Are you intrinsically agile, can you pivot?
Do you function as a rigid regular army or can you operate at any time as a frugal and fearsome battalion?
Perhaps your success is built around rigid strengths that can be revealed at the feet of clay. Do you have the ability to operate more vividly as assault platoons. If not, consider changing your organizational structure or risk being ambushed by seasoned squads.
Are you relying too much on an unfair advantage that you don’t control?
You may have gained a favourable position because of patronage, clientelism, elitism, bias or other unfair advantage. This may have given you a false sense of superiority. You have probably become arrogant and self-confident of your merits. Alas, if you’re like that, I won’t be able to convince you to change. What I can say is that such an attitude will be to your long-term detriment. Your future failures will force you to change unless they are too great for you to recover from.
Is it security that governs you?
Is it fear of making mistakes that governs your choices? If so, you are in danger. Get into the habit of taking risks, of putting yourself out in the open, otherwise you risk developing a conservative and rigid mind in the event of a serious crisis.
Do you make flexibility a physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual element?
Finally, you need to cultivate flexibility at all levels. Flexibility of mind means physical, emotional and even spiritual flexibility. If you manage to develop flexibility in at least one of these dimensions, you can be sure that it has a positive ripple effect on your intellectual flexibility. Be like water at every moment of your day.
