A Spiritual Way of Dealing with Crisis

“How am I going to get out of this?”, “How could this happen to me?”, What am I going to do?”. We’ve all been there. Life is such that crisis or stressful events are bound to occur at some point in our life.

While some people tend to deal with stressful events like water off a duck's back, others find it difficult to cope.

A few years ago, while in my darkest days facing bankruptcy, I embraced the teachings of Taoism. The whole Taoist philosophy spoke to me and seemed to make a lot of sense.

The first thing I learnt is that life just is. I began to remove my ego and critical mind, making a conscious effort to detach any opinions I may have about a certain situation. I became the conscious observer. I literally got to a point where the world was falling down around my ears, and I’d almost want to laugh rather than cry as I began seeing my life almost like an outsider. In doing so, I reclaimed my power. The debilitating stress and anxiety began to fall away, and I began to feel inspired and motivated again.

The Yin Yang symbol perfectly represents the true nature of life. The Yin represents the negative things that happen, the yang the positive. The two sides intertwine in a circle forever going round and round. That's life! You cannot stop that. When you accept that everything just IS, then you can begin letting go of what you think is good or bad.

The second thing I learnt from Taoism is Wu Wei, which loosely translated means the art of not doing, or not forcing. It means that striving, pushing, grinding, or forcing a situation isn't necessarily a good thing to do.

These days we live in a culture where grinding, hustling, or working 20 hours a day is an honourable thing. But Wu Wei teaches us to use our time in the most effective way, not to be a busy fool just doing things for the sake of doing them. Wu Wei has taken me from near bankruptcy to earning the most money I have ever earnt, working less hours and enjoying more free time. I almost can't believe I had been duped into the whole 80 hour a week thing just to pass off that I am successful.

Another thing that really helped me was to schedule in worry time. I spent around two years getting very little sleep. My mind would race all night, with my heart wanting to leap out of my chest with anxiety. So I started to tell myself “now is my time to rest, tomorrow when I wake up, I will allow myself 10 minutes to worry about everything that needs to be done then I will get on with the rest of the day”. After about 2 weeks of saying this, I began sleeping again, even though my problems had not yet faded. Having a full nights’ sleep had obvious beneficial effects on my health, I began thinking clearly again which helped me to make the right decisions to move forward out of the hell I was living in.

Ultimately, you need to find what works best for you. The above really helped me to get out of a deep hole. I highly recommend that you explore some elements of Taoism for yourself.

I wish you love, light, and peace of mind.

Sergio