Navigating life storms, facing personal losses, and overcoming adversity is challenging as it is. But how do we do that in the context of the world at large that seems to be going through one crisis after another? 

 

When life storms arrive, they vary in size and impact. The bigger and more global the problems in the world, the more attention they demand from us. The more attention they demand, the more compelled we feel to get involved to resolve them. The problem is, our actions rarely result in the outcome we wish to see out in the world.

 

Meanwhile, we also end up draining our own personal resources.

 

That is bad enough. What is worse though is that, when we are also faced with life storms of a personal nature, we often arrive at them depleted and unable to respond at our best. And since, these losses and adversities impact us personally, they aren’t something we can turn away from.

 

Intuitively, we may feel it makes more sense to jump into addressing big problems first. However, the reality of global issues is such that individual efforts rarely move the needle in the complex geo-political dynamics. Not to mention, this is a sure recipe for burnout.

 

That can make us feel helpless and depleted. Therefore, the more sensible approach to crises and life storms is to focus on the ones that are closer to home, so to speak. Not only can we understand these situations better, we can also see more clearly which of our actions have an impact. That improves our ability to respond to adversity effectively. 

 

Every loss and every challenge we face splits the path we’re on into two. 

 

One takes you towards disorientation and disintegration, which ultimately leads to more chaos. This is usually what happens when we try to focus on problems beyond our capacity to solve.

 

The other path takes us towards a deep assessment of what matters. This is when we pause and ask, what truly matters here? And, where are my resources best spent? This approach keeps us grounded, while also planting seeds for next steps and growth in our capacity to respond to adversity. 

 

In addition to these general considerations, there are four things that are helpful to keep in mind when we navigate dark times in our lives. These are:

 

• Understanding the Sphere of Threat
• Assessing our Sphere of Influence
• Orienting in Chaos
• Boosting our Sense of Agency

Making sure we have clear priorities, will also ensure that we are not leaking resources into the world we cannot help. That way we can preserve them to support our own smaller world, within the sphere of our influence. That is the way we have the most impact and are able to weather our own life storms. Tune into this episode and have a listen.

  

 

Additional episodes relevant to this topic:

 

• Preventing Parent Burnout, 8 Steps To Restoring Energy

• Parent On The Back Burner & Why Parents Burn Out

 

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