Crisis to Opportunity (Podcast) – Dr Jimtaylor

Episode #36: Lights…Camera…Action! of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast is the last of four in which I will wrap up my podcast by exploring how to take everything you’ve learned in this podcast and prepare you to take action that will help you positively confront and, hopefully, overcome the crisis you are faced with.

Everything I’ve discussed in Crisis to Opportunity prepares you to tackle the crisis you face head on and to replace a crisis mentality with an opportunity mindset. You have made a decision on what road you should take in response to the crisis and are committed to the road you’ve chosen. Now it’s time to take action! This can be scary because often there is no going back. What can make it even more scary is that there is no certainty that the road you choose will take you out of the crisis that has arisen. At the end of the day, you must take action because doing nothing guarantees that you will fail.

To learn more, please listen to Episode #36: Lights…Camera…Action! of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast.

Episode #35: Madness to Method of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast is the third of four in which I will wrap up my podcast by exploring how to take everything you’ve learned in this podcast and prepare you to take action that will help you positively confront and, hopefully, overcome the crisis you are faced with.

Quite simply, a crisis causes a sort of madness in people by taking everything that was normal and throwing it for a loop. Not surprisingly then, madness is a recipe for disaster in response to a crisis. The only solution for this crisis-induced madness is creating a method of action that is imbued with clarity of purpose and direction. This framework provides clearly identified roles and responsibilities, articulated goals, and processes to address the challenges of the crisis.

To that end, goal setting is a simple and practical tool you can use to create a method for meeting the challenges of a crisis. For some very elemental reason, people respond to goals in a very deep and personal way. The experience of setting a goal, working toward a goal, and achieving a goal has a powerful emotional resonance that causes us to continue to strive even farther. Pride and inspiration play a central role in how goal setting impacts your ability to overcome a crisis. Pride leads you to put forth the effort in pursuit of your goals while inspiration follows achievement of a goal and encourages you to set your sights on the next goal.

To learn more, please listen to Episode #35: Madness to Method of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast.

Episode #34: Uncertain to Decisive of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast is the second of four in which I will wrap up my podcast by exploring how to take everything you’ve learned in this podcast and prepare you to take action that will help you positively confront and, hopefully, overcome the crisis you are faced with.

Uncertainty is an absolute kiss of death in a crisis. It causes hesitation at a time when action may be the best course to follow and it interferes with full commitment to whichever road you choose. At the same time, kneejerk decisiveness can be worse than uncertainty because ill-conceived decisions usually escalate today’s complex crises. Uncertain or poorly thought-out decisions increase the crisis mentality that is waiting on the edge of your psyche when an opportunity mindset is needed most.

There’s nothing more important to the successful resolution of a crisis than decision-making because your decisions dictate the direction that you go at every stage of a crisis. Yet, decision-making can end up being impacted by the frantic and chaotic nature of the crisis itself, which is no way to make decisions. Instead, the process should be structured and deliberate to arrive at the best possible decisions as you traverse a crisis. Without a clear and effective process, you may make some horrendous and potentially catastrophic decisions which may only deepen the severity of the crisis.

To learn more, please listen to Episode #34: Uncertain to Decisive of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast.

Episode #33: Blurry to 20/20 of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast is the first of four in which I will wrap up my podcast by exploring how to take everything you’ve learned in this podcast and prepare you to take action that will help you positively confront and, hopefully, overcome the crisis you are faced with.

Of course, action in and of itself isn’t enough. Instead, you need to take intentional action that you see clearly will lead to an acceptable resolution. Yet, “clear” is not a word typically associated with a crisis. Rather, it’s more often associated with something like driving in a heavy fog with many aspects of a crisis making the road ahead difficult to see. In fact, you can only see a short way ahead of you into obscure fog with frequent unforeseeable potholes. Navigating a road, or crisis, in these circumstances is even more difficulty when it’s unfamiliar to you, which tends to be the case with crises. The result is that you must drive very cautiously and are at constant risk of crashing. Such a hesitant approach is no way to make it through a crisis intact.

Instead, you must see clearly every cause and effect, influence, and possible outcome for you to successfully navigate your way through a crisis. With this clarity, you will have the best possible understanding of the situation which allows you to take appropriate action based on a clear vision of  the crisis and determine the quickest way to get through it with the greatest success.

To learn more, please listen to Episode #33: Blurry to 20/20 of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast.

Episode #32: Distracted to Focused of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast is the fourth of four episodes in which I explore the importance of what I call mental muscles in how you respond to a crisis.

Focus may be the most underappreciated and misunderstood mental aspect that contributes to how we respond in a crisis. There are two important things you need to know about focus. First, most people think of focus as concentrating on one thing for a long time. Yes, at times, you do need to zero in all your attention on one task. At the same time, focus involves the ability to adjust outward (e.g., looking at printed information and listening to experts) and inward (e.g., identifying and analyzing different investment strategies moving forward) as the demands of a crisis may require.

Second, focus is so important in a crisis because it’s the gateway to effectively using all higher-order thinking: perception, memory, language, learning, understanding, creativity, reasoning, synthesis, analysis, problem solving, and decision making. Without the ability to focus effectively, you are more likely to revert back to your primitive brain of instincts, emotions, and knee-jerk reactions.

To learn more, please listen to Episode #32: Distracted to Focused of my Crisis to Opportunity podcast.