A major life crisis shatters some people, yet others emerge stronger and healthier as if they had discovered a new person within. Everyone’s life circumstances are unique to a great degree but how they react to these crises vary from person to person. If you look at people who have emerged renewed from major life crises, you would notice four qualities or skills in them. Conversely in people who are crushed by life crises you would notice the absence of one or more skills. The first of these life crises surviving skills is:

Ability to Find Meaning

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The ability to find meaning answers the question “Why?”

How does an individual find meaning for suffering or misery when life seems incomprehensible and fragmented?

You need to frame your present situation in the wider context of your entire life path. Reflect on the events of your life. This gives you perspective. You see that others have misfortunes and trials also. Your misfortunes could have been much worse. Surely, you must have some good memory of success or good achievement. With this perspective, you get an ability to identify your strengths. Then you need to adjust your expectations to better suit your abilities and opportunities. If you can, you are then ready to exploit them better in new ways and assume new roles for yourself.

Resilience

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The skill of resilience answers the “How” question. This is the motivation part, the “Why bother” aspect.

You accept difficulties as signals for your growth rather than punishment. Resilience is your ability to see the bigger picture and anchor yourself to a higher plateau of possibilities. You need to see that in order to gain something valuable you need to invest in a lot of effort. You need to make compromises, defer instant gratification. People who can manage to leverage their unique qualities and characteristics achieve success because of this ability to sublimate desire without repression.

The marshmallow experiment is a famous test of this concept conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University in the 1960s. A group of four-year olds were tested by being given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait, and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and showed that those children with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more successful (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or SAT.

Networking Skills

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This answers the “With what help?” question.

None of us live alone on our private island, though some seem to. So we need the help of other people and we in turn help them. Networking skills involve forming and maintaining diverse types of networks and keeping their natures intact. Further, the skills to determine the beneficial quality of a relationship and how to dissociate from a relationship, which is abusive, and get on with life, are crucial skills. A central element of networking skills is “Recruiting”. Going and getting professional help is also a form of recruiting. Don’t hesitate to do this whenever you need it.

As you would see, facing new people and situations require us to collect ourselves and try to present a more pleasing face to the outside world. This can give you a wonderful opportunity to get out of the rut of misery for a while. Don’t we feel much better even on a dreary morning with a terrible hangover, if we have a shower and groom ourselves to go out and meet the world?

Finding and Sustaining Hope

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If you study survivors of crises, you would notice that they usually believe in a master plan for life and this creates a sense of trust for them. Some people learn not be ashamed of their difficulties and strive towards creating something new. They learn that the symphony of life is composed of different tones, some sweet and sharp, soft and loud, as well as discords.

Where do you turn to when you need encouragement? Who listens to you? Where do you get the understanding that gives you hope and courage? Some people turn inwards and pray to God, divine presence, the soul or whatever they call it, while some people have another person in their lives who supplies hope. Some people get their hope and inspiration from art, from music, from the theatre while some spend time alone in nature to get inspiration and feel charged.

Example of Turning Life Crisis to Success

I have to tell my experience of seeing one immigrant lady battling her life crisis. I know one immigrant lady from Somalia, who couldn’t get a job no matter what she tried. Though prospective employers were careful to avoid discrimination, “You don’t fit in. You have no skills that we need”, was the message she got all the time. Angry and miserable, she was so frustrated that she wanted to die. One day, a kid from the neighbour knocked on her door to ask for food as her mother was taken to the hospital. This lady went over and cooked for the whole family until the mother came back. They liked her cooking as it was much better than their mother’s.

The kid’s mother had a well-paid but stressful job. When the mother came back from the hospital, she proposed that the neighbour cook meals for her family while she worked to earn money and help the lady pay her rent. The news about this cooking arrangement spread and in a few months many in her community wanted her services. She then had much more work than she could cope with. Money kept pouring in also as people were very satisfied with her cooking and her motherly personality. Soon, she hired two other unemployed ladies to help her out with the deliveries. By finding a skill within herself and a mechanism for trading her skills so that everyone benefited, she found a meaning for herself. Rather than constantly being frustrated by employers who wouldn’t appreciate her, she found significance in her own community and went on to become a cherished member who also helped others.

When all these four skills are in balance, you have a greater chance of emerging out of a major life crisis, renewed with a new sense of purpose and direction.