At the core of motivation there lies the belief that progress can be made, the confidence that one can make it happen, and the tenacity to keep pushing until the desired ideal has been materialized. These aforementioned three elements are ultimately what allow us to deal effectively with all unexpected crises in life. If you have ever attempted to follow through with a project, start a business, build a relationship or a family, learn a new skill, or simply go about your normal life you have definitely faced with unexpected crises that you neither foresaw nor felt prepared to deal with particularly if you were running low on time or other resources.
However, being able to avoid faltering in face of such moments is indeed the secret art of personal leadership as most of us can find it easy to succumb to fear and sorrow in such moments of doubt which could compel us to take the wrong steps in tackling the issue at hand and later regret having done so. That is precisely why being equipped with the right cognitive tools is paramount to dealing with unexpected or unwanted crises. In one of his seminars, Tony Robbins asked the audience to raise their hands if they liked to solve the problems of life and the majority raised their hands to which Tony responded by rejecting the claim of the audience saying that they looked forward to solving the problems that they liked not the ones that they didn’t like but nevertheless reminded them that it is in dealing with those very unwanted and unexpected issues that we achieve the highest level of growth and personal mastery.
Tackling uncertainty is indeed an experience very few look forward to having as we humans tend to value security and certainty on a very instinctive level. Anything that might pose a threat to our survival and wellbeing is enough to render us concerned often compelling us to avoid anything that is unknown or unfamiliar. Alas such an approach often backfires and does so often at the worst moments when we face with an unexpected problem that pushes us out of our comfort zones. The fact of the matter is that we don’t get to always choose the problems that we want to deal with, and no matter how well thought out our contingency plans might be, sooner or later we will find ourselves amidst a crisis we could neither foresee nor prevent. Hence, in leadership it is critically important to develop a personality that is best described as a tactician who excels at planning, preparation, and prevention yet is aware of the importance of remaining steadfast in the pursuit of the goals even when all plans fail and the person or the team was never prepared to deal with blow as no one saw it coming.
Mental rigidity is defined as one’s impotence to change course and exercise flexibility in times of rapid and unexpected change which in turn leads to the feelings of overwhelm and frustration both of which can render the individual vulnerable to further damage and loss. In the book Flow the author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reminds the readers that the world is not built with the well-being of humans or any other life form in mind and in essence the nature is neutral. An earth quake occurs because the seismic activities beneath the earth and its corresponding laws of physics make its occurrence inevitable irrespective of whether there are human settlements on top of it or not, an economic meltdown could occur following the sociopolitical changes in a given society irrespective of whether it might lead to the bankruptcy of many hardworking and law abiding citizens, and last but not least unexpected health issues will not go away unless the underlying issue has been taken care of even if the long recovery period could jeopardize the welfare of the individual afflicted by that ailment.
In such a situation, giving in to negativity and harboring a dire sense of pessimism or apathy might seem as the only logical reactions to the amplitude of uncertainty that is embedded in the very core of life; however, one closer inspection reveals that we all face with unexpected crises in life yet not everyone suffers from it, on the contrary, a group of individuals end up benefiting from such upheavals in ways no one could fathom. But how do these select individuals accomplish such a feat? The answer to this question lies at the belief system of these people who understand that plans are just that: plans, and as Helmuth von Moltke so aptly said it: “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.” This statement doesn’t merely apply to the leadership in battlefield and can be witnessed in any area of life as we yet and again realize that in the majority of cases things don’t go as planned and we need to constantly adjust our plans according to the reality as we go along, the same way an aircraft constantly adjusts course on the way to its destination.
Therefore, one’s mental preparedness for dealing with the unforeseen in form of proactively expecting that our plans rarely retain their original form as we go through the steps to realize them is an indispensable quality of leadership both on personal and group levels. Life is embroiled with uncertainty and any attempt to fully strip our existence of the unexpected will ultimately prove futile and the most optimum approach is to welcome the unexpected into our lives and employ our mental agility and emotionally dexterity to constantly change and improve our plans on the fly and according to the reality on the ground as opposed to our mere extractions in our heads. After all, the art of living and leading is indeed the art of dealing with the unforeseen!
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Daniel Molgan Official 