Something bad happened, and there was a crisis. There are still many risks, and the situation could yet turn worse, but at the moment, catastrophe has been averted. If approached correctly, this can be a fruitful learning experience for you and the people around you. It may seem too early to learn from the crisis, but don't wait too long. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes an important distinction between our experience and our memories:
The experiencing self is the one that answers the question: "Does it hurt now?" The remembering self is the one that answers the question: "How was it, on the whole?"... Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion... The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self. [1]
So while events are still fresh in your mind, and the distress and anguish felt by your experiencing self are still vivid, here are some questions to pose to yourself and others:
What did you learn about yourself?
How did you respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?
Crises evoke a sense of threat, which triggers the "fight, flight, or freeze" response. What did you learn about your tendencies?
How did you communicate with people (venue, channel, cadence, level of detail, tone)?
How did people respond to your communications? What does that tell you about your effectiveness?
How did you make decisions? What did you learn about your decision-making under stress?
What did you learn about the people around you?
How did THEY respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?
What did you learn about THEIR "fight, flight, or freeze" tendencies?
How did they communicate with you and others?
How effective were their communication efforts?
How did THEY make decisions? What did you learn about THEIR decision-making under stress?
Gathering this data is a useful exercise, and it's by no means sufficient. Awareness is always the necessary first step, but it rarely leads to growth on its own. Truly learning from this crisis will entail understanding your strengths and your weaknesses, and then engaging in an ongoing effort to maximize the former and address the latter.
More specifically, you'll want to understand how you can best prepare for the next crisis. Outdoor writer Tom Stienstra survived countless life-threatening situations during his decades roaming the wilderness by remembering a piece of wisdom from self-defense instructor Il Ling New: "Everyone thinks they will rise to the occasion. What happens instead is that you default to your level of training." [2] So here are some further questions to consider:
What do your responses above tell you about your strengths and weaknesses?
How can you be better prepared for the next crisis?
What might it look like to train for that crisis?
Who might you turn to, where might you go, to obtain such training?
The questions above are largely aimed at capabilities, but crises also teach us something essential that can't be learned under any other circumstances about character.
What did you do that you're proud of? What motivated those actions?
What did you do that you're NOT proud of? What motivated THOSE actions?
What do any of these actions say about your character?
What do the actions of others say about THEIR character?
What do you want to remember?
Footnotes
[1] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 381 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)
[2] Tom Stienstra’s Tales of Survival (San Francisco Chronicle, 2023)
For Further Reading
How Leaders Overcome Adversity
Aggression, Panic, Paralysis, Denial
The Importance of Slowing Down
Photo by GraceOda.
