Crisis as a call for change and how to integrate it in your life

“Crisis is a call for change and when it comes in your life, make sure you give yourself the necessary time to understand its full meaning. Crisis gives you the opportunity to find the hidden gold in your shadow.”

I am just coming out of a personal crisis which started a few months ago and was triggered by the death of my sister. This loss followed the death of our mother 5 years earlier. Two people of my 4-member family are now forever gone from my present life. They live in my past and, perhaps, our souls will meet again in the future beyond. I dedicate my writing work to them.

I have spent considerable time reflecting upon, analyzing, and processing my experience of going through a crisis. Earlier on I wrote about the four things I’ve learned from the ordeal. Now I would like to re-define the meaning of crisis and consider it as an opportunity for change. I would also like to shift the lens and view crisis as a productive rather than destructive element of life. Along with the lessons I’ve learned from my experience, I also found out that a crisis is characterized by 2 main principles:

1) A crisis calls you to change something about yourself and/or your life
2) In order to do that you need to devote time and effort to the process

1) Crisis as a Call for Change in Your Life

Be ready to renounce a part of yourself

My revelation from going through a crisis was that a part of me had to die. There was something in me that was inhibiting my growth. Something that was holding me back. The death of these people was the death of that self. After the episode of crisis I was shattered and didn’t know in what direction to head. But I knew I had to stand up to the challenge. I took on a mental and emotional journey learning about karma, astrology, forgiveness and bonding with my inner child. That also drove me back to my blog and journaling my discoveries.

I am coming out of this episode with a better understanding about my soul’s path in this lifetime, and a greater clarity of what particular beliefs and attachments have held me back in the past. I can wholeheartedly claim that after this crisis my view and perception of life have evolved.

Giving up an old part of yourself is the first step towards recovery and healing. It is like giving up a bad habit and creating space for the new you to be born. And you will never want to look back again!

Open yourself up for the new in your life

Looking back after coming out of a crisis I can see where I had been resistant and unwilling to change. I understood why I had acted in particular ways, primarily based on false beliefs created in early childhood and previous life attachments. I also understood the need for maturation and expansion. Our souls crave that and won’t stop pressing until we are ready let go of our oldness.

This process is somewhat like acquiring a new identity. You forget about previous patterns of behavior and outgrown modes of thinking. After you’ve done some inner work, you have a deeper understanding of what you need to be doing or not doing. When you have actively and consciously renounced that which holds you back, you know better where to focus your energy.

It takes great strength and heart to turn your back to your pain. But the pain is not here for you to hold on to, the pain is here to drive you towards your growth. Don’t resist it, embrace it as your teacher! Then, let go of it.

2) Crisis as a Time for Inner Research

Get to know yourself better

What I also realized from going through a crisis is that it certainly propels you to ask questions and look for answers respectively. It lights the spark of inner research and encourages a sort of internal audit. But before you even start you need to pause yourself. You need to create the necessary time and space, to give yourself permission, to commit to the process.

Personally, I made an opening in my daily routine. In the few hours in the morning when my toddler was at preschool I dived into reading – one book led me to another. I felt the need to just do that and I followed up. I know sometimes we prioritize other things, or we just don’t feel the need to go any further into this work. But I also found out that these suppressed issues inevitably surface back up again. The more we evade them (consciously or not), the more painful the process will be later.

You can get to know yourself better – patterns and attachments you fall for, false beliefs. You can also learn to live in a state of openness and awareness, read the signals in your life and respond to them more timely and wholeheartedly.

Give yourself time to grieve

It is understandable to be in pain. Sometimes it hurts so much that you actually feel it in your body. We are human beings, and as a part of the human experience we feel, we hurt, we suffer deeply. The best we can do is to welcome the feelings and emotions, and let them run through us, to come in and out. I admit this is hard when there’s others involved. But even if you have to shut yourself away from the rest of the world for a period of time, I say do it. The consequences of suppressing your feelings will be graver.

When my mother first passed away I didn’t look deep enough, I was younger, I was lost. However, I was quickly challenged to change my course in life– I was at the beginning of settling into family life. I started living with my partner, I was pregnant, and we moved into a new place. I turned my back to working, being single, and living in the city. It was an intense growing-up course. But it wasn’t until this year when the death of my sister really shifted something in me, and I was ready and mature enough to question my life situation.

Whenever the time comes and you are called to make a change, don’t underestimate the importance of it. Make sure you do what you feel you need to do. If you don’t know what to do, make sure you give yourself time to ponder, ask questions, and open up your heart and soul for transformation.

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Have you experienced a crisis in your own life? What did it teach you? What tools did you use to cope with it? Let me know in the comments.