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  4. Define your goals. You may feel that your life is in disarray, so it helps to give yourself some direction. Set up a series of goals that you can easily achieve. When they are achieved, you will sense 03/08/2008 ly change as you wend your way through the crisis. For example, Monday will be the day to go to the grocery store alone. Tuesday you’ll call a therapist. Wednesday you’ll go to the gym or take a mile-long walk. Later on your goals will be loftier – like going on a weekend trip with a
new friend, arranging a party at your house, or starting a new job.

5. Take care of business. Your life may be in crisis, but it must go on nevertheless. Pay your bills on time. Go to the doctor and dentist. Do your laundry. Bathe every day. Take your dog for a walk daily. Keep your house clean. Water the plants. These activities give you structure and serve as a good counterbalance to the chaos that characterizes life crisis.

6. Nurture yourself. The world may seem cruel when you are in crisis. Find at least one thing that you really enjoy doing – and then do it. Give yourself some pleasurable activities. Take a walk. Enjoy the sunset. Do a jigsaw puzzle. Eatice cream (but only as an occasional treat). While you engage in these activities, allow yourself to have pleasant thoughts. If negative thinking comes into the picture, observe that you’re getting negative, and let it go.

There are a few things that you should avoid doing during a crisis because they are counterproductive and interfere with your ultimate goal, which is to build a new life that’s true to who you really are. For example, during a crisis –


 

-Avoid substance abuse. You need to stay oriented in the present and use all of your faculties to meet the huge challenge of the crisis. Using drugs, including alcohol, replaces effective action with a temporary state of feeling good, which, when the drug wears off, leaves you still in the thrall of the crisis. Drinking or drugging your way through a crisis is a way of asking it to linger on in your life for a long time.

-Observe when you have vengeful thoughts and work to let them go.
We may be angry when our crisis has been caused by someone else, and it is understandable that we may have thoughts about having the other person go through the same pain that we are experiencing. Holding on to retributive thinking sustains a negative cycle and prolongs the crisis. Frame your thinking in different terms – the other person has actually given you a wonderful gift that has allowed you to move into a new phase of your life. You are the winner, not the other person.

-Change negative thoughts into positive ones. Try turning your negative thinking, which we experience during periods of crisis, into positive thoughts. Do this by observing your negativity (“There I go again”) and then consciously telling yourself that you’re now going to focus on the positives in your life. Positive thinking attracts positive experiences – and allows us to set the stage

Recommended Reading
Welcome to Your Crisis, by Laura Day.
Paperback, 2006, 270 pages, $13.99.
New York: Little, Brown and Company.
ISBN – 0-316-11464-2.
 
     

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