Originally published in 2006, Welcome to Your Crisis is a practical book to face your live crises, or the crisis you are facing right now, and to get the good out of it not only successfully but reborn: stronger, wiser, healthier, and more "you" than ever before. Crisis is presented as a cathartic catalyst for positive transformation. The point of departure of Laura Day is that life is full of crises, so we better learn how to navigate them successfully, as that is what separates people who strive in life and those who succumb.
Laura explicitly says that some aspects of her "methodology" are corroborated by the work of others: Hans Selye in the field of Stress, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the field of Optimal Human Functioning and sociologist Charles Fritz in the field of Human Behaviour during disasters. However, much of the advice she gives can be also related to Jungian Psychoanalysis, Positive Thinking, Behavioural Psychology and old literature on the Subconscious. If you are familiar with those, you might find some of the things Laura Day mentions in her book, a déjà-vue.
Basic Nuggets
~~ Your current crisis might be the best thing it has happening to you, even though you don't see it know, because it will certainly make you grow, get you closer to your true self, and even change your life for the best, or just make you grow. Your crisis could be a blessing in disguise.
~~ Life is full of lessons, and you learn many of them when you are in crisis.
~~ Crisis is our way of evolving when we lack the courage to do so on our own volition.
~~ First thing to overcome a crisis is to recognise that you have one.
~~ What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
~~ Our response to any change is within our control.
~~ Identical responses produce identical results, if you want to change your results you change your responses. New problems require new tools, new attitudes and responses.
~~ I you play victim, you cannot do anything.
~~ No action is a conscious action.
~~ Look forward not to the past. Don't munch on what you cannot change, just of what you can and want to change, focus on your present and future.
~~ Regroup your energy and focus on what you want, not on what/who you don't want, hate or despise.
~~ Attention goes to what you focus on.
~~ To Change Your World, Change Yourself
~~ Crisis is transformation delayed.
~~ Once you commit to your crisis, you commit to its resolution.
Things I Liked
~ The book has an absence of New Age spirituality mumbo-jumbo that I find very refreshing! Good for people of all religions or without religion.
~~ Day re-frames crisis, gives it a positive halo, and sheds light on it, so that we can overcome it. Every cloud has a silver lining:
"Crisis is the challenge and the opportunity to uncover what we value, rediscover what we need, redefine what gives us pleasure, re-create a meaningful life, and reconfigure the inner workings of self. Crisis forces us to reach deep within ourselves, where we can discover treasured, powerful, forgotten parts of us that we hid long ago, even from ourselves. The lives we can create once we open this treasure chest of being exceed not only our expectations but also our imagination." (locs. 173-176)
~~ Her insistence on focusing on the present, which pervades the book, is really helpful. You need to be present not to get lost in the past or the future, need to be present to acknowledge and honour your feelings, need to be present not get ruminating in your head and your blood boiling after what you did or was done to you. Focusing on the very now gives you the perfect frame of mind to go through the basics you need to take care of for your life to function.
~~ Throughout the book, Day insists on asking ourselves "Who Am I?" Not a new question or exercise, but especially relevant in moments of crisis, because when we are in crisis our sense of self is also in crisis, even threatened. We need to look inside and see the "who" in the "I", and discover and uncover what lies beneath the "self" that is defined by profession, gender, marital status, race, nationality, age and religion. The rescue of the primitive or real self, your inner golden "I", is what we should be looking for in a crisis, so that we can bring it out and make it more fully present, honour it, and follow its path. I found the consideration of the "I" as an ecosystem or a "community" really true, and something that deeply resonates with me.
~~ I found chapter 8 on the personal mythology one of the most helpful to me. You can find your personal mythology in what you tell about yourself, how others see you, how you were seen when you were a child, and the family history that your family handed over to you. This mythology hides an internal process that we believe keeps us safe, a core fear and a core desire. If we are in crisis our myth is not working and needs to be changed so that the core desire is placed at the top of our myth and is not buried by it
You are not your story. In fact your story is inaccurate, subjective, and— unless it is helping you achieve— superfluous. You are your choices. Your story does not dictate your life— your choices do. (loc. 1725-1728).
~~ Laura doesn't think that her tools make miracles, but is sure that they help us without a doubt. She even says that we don't need to believe that something works, because when things work they do work disregarding whether we believe it or not. I think that sort of comment is very good for sceptics. The message is, give it a try and see what happens, don't take my word for granted, experience it.
~~ I especially liked Day's reflection on rumination ("the mind voyage of woulda, shoulda, coulda, what if, and if only.") Laura advises different things and exercises to face the present and the future and not to linger in the past. Most of the advice resonates with me and found it very useful.
~~ There are many exercises in the book, but some of my favourites are The superhero, Packing your Trunk, Consulting our Inner Guide, and Attracting Your future. Your certainly might be others as your favourite.
Things that didn't Resonate with Me
~~ Day says the same, with different words, quite often. Basically, it sums up as: your crisis might be the best thing that ever happened to you as something good or better will come out of it.
~~ Days classifies people in four main types based on four main knee-jerk sort of reactions to crisis: anxiety type, denial type, rage type and depression type. Generally speaking, there is true in which she says and advises, but these four types are very simplistic! People don't react always the same, as reactions depend not only on our character and temperament, but also on our circumstances, level of maturity and inner growth. In my personal experience, crisis elicits different and multiple reactions in the same people. If a love one dies I might get depressed, but that doesn't mean I am depressive. If am unfairly dismissed by my employer, I might get a mix of rage, anxiety and depression all together or in a succession of emotional stages, and the same but in different order after a break-up. We cannot be described by our reactions unless we react always in the same way. I think if we are part of a type, the type has to be more flexible and elaborated taking more variables into account. I like the Jungian type system best. Much of the advice Day gives relates to this type classification so, unfortunately, the advice is also simplistic and not always helpful.
~~ There are basic strong differences in the ways introverts and extroverts deal with life, success and crisis. Laura Day confesses that she's an introvert, but then she gives many items of advice that involve calling your many friends, joining groups, being social, having people over. Really, introverts don't have a liking for groups, meetings or for relating to several people at the same time. Most introverts have a very small number of very close friends and they relate to them individually. Personally, dealing with my personal stuff with a group of people would be excruciating, no matter how lovely my friends are! Having any sort of gathering at home that involves more than two people would be something stressful and non-enjoyable. Joining a group that supports people in my circumstances can be helpful, but it demands a lot of mental and emotional effort from an introvert to join any group because groups per se don't ever resonate with most introverts.
~~ At times, Laura recommend asking a good friend to define or describe us. Of course, the support and advice of your friends is important, but asking our friends to define us might not be that wise! People's projections are always there, and a friend might define me according to his/her own projections. Besides, some friends will never be able to tell us the truth just because they want to protect us, or don't have the guts to be fully honest with us, or because they care very much about the relationship and don't want to put it in jeopardy by something they say. I think that getting to know our shadow, getting to know ourselves, BS free of course, will give us better answers than most friends would. For example, not long ago, when talking to a dear friend, I mentioned about my being an introvert, and he laughed and commented sarcastically, "yes sure, soooo introvert." Well, I am an introvert by the book, unless you don't want to see that. He can't see it because he projects his extroversion and being extra-social onto me because in the past I have socialised with him. Why would I ask him to describe me if he doesn't even get the most obvious essential thing about me and has known me for years?! Also, I don't want to be defined by what other people think I am! If you want, go ahead!
~~ Laura Day reminds us of the many crisis we have survived and we are still here and that the same will happen to us right now. Well, that is a psychological cognitive bias she is applying. Optimism bias?
I Agree, Somewhat
Day says that the three "Rs" (rumination, recrimination, and retribution) divert our attention from where it should be, the present and future, not the past, and divert our energy from the centre, our centre. I agree with that totally. The solutions Day offers to overcome the 3 Rs are the 3 Fs (Forgetfulness, forgiveness and Faith-Fullness). However, I don't agree with Day that we need to forgive, forget or to forget vendetta to move on. We can move on without doing that. Said differently, unless you are obsessed about somebody or something, and these obsessions are consuming you inside, you just need to move on.
Re forgiveness, we don't need to forgive anybody to move on. We need to focus on our life, on moving forward, on surrounding ourselves with the right people, ob doing things that make us happy, in extricating ourselves from the source of pain if possible, on limiting or severing contact with the source of pain if possible, move away, take a holiday, change city, change suburb, change flatmates, change jobs, whatever we need to do to start afresh. When our thoughts fill up with the painful memory, we need to think about other things or people, make a conscious decision to replace those painful thoughts with others that fill our heart. If we do that, constantly, we will eventually come to surprise ourselves, and think quite neutrally about those who harmed us. That also requires time, and cannot be done by magic. I do believe that forgiveness is something that people should earn, not a free gift we have to distribute to jerks who used, abused and harmed us despite being fully aware of their actions. Otherwise, I don't see the problem. We are all human. We can understand that somebody harmed us unwillingly. But too often, the harm is willingly inflicted.
Against recrimination ("
the desire to be made whole by the act of a just outcome"), I agree that in the heat and proximity of the event, you are less rational, less fair, and you can do more harm to yourself. Day says:
be aware of the reality that you will cause yourself far more harm than you will inflict on another when you seek retribution in the heat of the moment.(loc. 1530-1531)
I agree that vendetta is best served in a cold plate, but of course I want vendetta. I want the Universe to punish those people who did harm to me on purpose, who were aware of the damage they were causing, that were conscious of their actions inflicting harm, those who used or abused me or those who showed a complete lack of ethical behaviour but preached high morals. I will be celebrating their fall, Martini in hand. I don't obsess about this, I just hope to see the boomerang effect effectuated before I die. They idea of the Universe punishing them makes me move on faster, believe it or not. I don't feel the urge to kill anybody, I feel the urge of the Universe to do the job for me.
Things I Missed
~~ Laura Day is a brilliant intuitive. This being the case, I was expecting some specific exercises or information on how intuition can help us specifically in our crisis. She mentions many times that intuition is a guidance when we are in crisis. Well, why not giving specific information about how to access intuition when we are in crisis and blocked?
~~ Although I liked the book and what Day says, and some of the tools she gives, I missed a bit of a more structure and cohesive system. For example, once we have read the book and do the exercises, do we do them again? for how long should we do the exercises? A year, every week, every day? In which order? Can we do some of them and not others? In the order they are mentioned in the book or in another? All of them or just those we like? That sort of very simple but practical info was missing most of the time
Rendering for Kindle
The book is quite well edited, with barely any typo. Something I never take for granted in Kindle! So, that is always a big thumbs up from me. However, the index of chapters in the side menu and at the beginning of the book has not titles, just numbers. I mean, how difficult and how much work would have taken the editor to link the title of the chapter with the number of the chapter? Little!
In Short
This is good overall lift-me up sort of book, well written, with some exercises to stop, ponder and seld-answer. This is a general book on crisis, so if you are going through serious illness, a nasty divorce, the death of a love one, bankruptcy or job severance, I would personally be looking for specific books on those subjects. Although Day is well known for her work on intuition, and intuition is
mentioned repeatedly in this work, the aim of the book is not to develop
intuition, but how to face your crisis using your
intuition. If you want to develop your intuition you need to check
other books by Laura Day, not this one.
To me, the best part of the book are the last three or four chapters, as they offer, perhaps, the advice, exercises and introspection that resonated most with me. It could be differently for any other person, of course.
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