Most people when faced with difficult times will only continue to do what they have always done, but they will work it harder, be more persistent, research more, intensify, or even just get louder! As the times get even tougher (like the abyss many are in now,) they will just continue to intensify all these behaviors.  

As the times continue to toughen, these intense patterns begin to break down under the toxic stress and anxiety of worrying about “how am I going to get out of this?” or “how am I going to survive this?”

As psychological systems break down, there is even a very brief period where you will create all-out intensity in order to fabricate, or hope for, short term survival. Primitive systems that you fixed and stopped using, even long ago ones, will begin to come into effect or return.  Therefore, when a technique, tool, or belief that you have used for the last five years for your success is not working and you’ve tried harder to make it work and it still isn’t creating success, you begin to revert to older systems in desperation or in the mistaken assumption that somehow, some way, this is the only thing you know how to do to survive.

It takes a rare individual to be able to say “stop the insanity,” and “I have to completely reinvent myself now more than ever, now in the middle of this crisis, now in the middle of the abyss when it doesn’t look like anything that I am doing is creating success or survival for me.  NOW!  Now of all times – I must reinvent myself!” It’s a dangerous and scary philosophy, it’s out of our comfort zone, and it is counter intuitive. Now is when life is demanding you to try a new strategy.  You must create a break-through to survive, succeed, and thrive at a new, incredibly intense, risky level or in a changing, difficult, and often dangerous world.

So when you do this self examination, be cognizant that the rules that you used during the easy times are not always the rules that survive during the tough times.  You really have to look at both scenarios and decide what works best, what is your deepest truth, and how are you designed and set up to survive and excel in difficult times. It’s an examination that many are afraid to do.