Recently I was on a flight where the flight attendant delivered his safety instructions over the PA and finished with this statement, “Please be careful when you open the overhead bins because, in flight, shift happens”. Clever, huh? I don’t care if you’re a pre-school teacher or the Pope, in this life, things don’t always go as planned.
Here are 7 ways to leverage disruption and thrive when shift happens to you.
1. Don’t make things worse: You won’t make your best decisions when things are on fire… so just don’t! The easiest way to worsen any complicated situation is to make major life decisions before the shock of the situation has worn off. If you just had a bomb dropped on you, give yourself some time to let the concussion wear off before you dive into a solution. Making promises, good or bad, or offering forgiveness too early may come back to bite you. Promises made during disruption are almost always formed out of anger. Premature forgiveness can lead to bitterness on your part or on the part of the person who thought they were forgiven.
2. Decide ahead of time how you’ll leverage disruption: You must decide ahead of time how you’ll be affected and perfected through disruption. Disruption that is certainly coming. Yes I know that’s hard to do when you’ve lost your job or your marriage. This isn’t an easy step. Most of the time the lesson is only obvious in the rear view mirror, but still you have to be committed to the lesson.
3. Take as much responsibility as you can: My pastor, Andy Stanley, claims that counseling has never been his strong suit but that he knows one thing with absolute certainty. If he couldn’t get people to focus on THEIR CONTRIBUTION to the problem at hand, they weren’t making progress.
No matter what the disruption is in your life right now, you have a choice to make as to whether you’re going to add to the problem or become a solution to it. If the responsibility always lies beyond you, you’ll revisit the same issues throughout your life. Get aggressive in finding ways to take responsibility and ownership of the solution.
4. Apply grace: When your life gets disrupted it’s almost always something you did, or something someone did to you. In either case cutting them, or yourself, a little slack is going to help you right the ship a lot faster. Grace can sometimes go down like bad medicine, but a little bit everyday will make your life much easier.
5. Seek professional guidance: Whether your disruption is being out of work and trying to find a job or trying to reconstruct your marriage, seek pro help first, fast, and often. I know how easy it is to think you’ve got a handle on things but there are just some things nobody can handle alone.
6. Let it finish before you move on: The Bible says that the “testing of our faith leads to perseverance and perseverance must finish it’s work so we might be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:3-4) Guys, for us that means not sweeping stuff under the rug and acting as if shift doesn’t hurt. Ladies, for you that means focusing on yourself. Helping us grow doesn’t help you grow. Whatever the shift is you’re dealing with, persevere and let the work being done finish.
7. Be a vacuum, but don’t live in one: Suck up information on the problem your dealing with but do it in the right way. You can’t always be sitting in front of a counselor so the people you allow to speak into your disruption are critical to your thinking and your decision making process. Some people just can’t give good advice. Some people can, but they may be to close to your situation to be objective. Find the right people and listen to them, apply their advice, rinse and repeat.
If you’re in the valley of the shadow of death right now I feel for you, and I can empathize. I’ve been there myself. It may be hard to see from where you sit, but learning to leverage the disruption you’re experiencing will propel you into the life you were created for. I promise the life ahead is far greater than anything you’ve been able to imagine, and it begins with your very next step.
What is that step? And will you take it?
