When your world’s turned upside down solve for today

Here’s a basic concept I share with people I coach and is applicable to anyone after their world’s turned upside down.

• When your world turns upside down you’re pushed into a forced identity transition. Here, your job is to create new options.

Now that life isn’t as it was and you can’t BE and DO like before, you’re in a liminal space—you’re neither here nor there.

You’re asking profound questions about:

• Who you are now.
• Who you CAN EVEN be.

And

• Who you WANT to become.

You’re asking these questions because life is now forever different.

And to become the new version of yourself you need to create new options.

• You do this by exploring, discovering, and testing new options.

As you cobble yourself back together.

As you fit yourself into your new normal.

Three principles can help you create new options under these circumstances:

1. Problem-solve for today not tomorrow.

2. Give extra attention and value to intuition.

3. Have lots of conversations.

For parents with a child with a catastrophic medical diagnosis, you’re in forced identity transition.

You have to get into gear and go full speed ahead without all the information you want and need.

Because even doctors don’t have crystal balls, it’s important to problem-solve for today not the future.

While you can’t completely avoid envisioning future scenarios, the more you focus on making today as good as it can be the less you’ll suffer.

• If you adopt the position that you don’t have to figure it all out today you’ll suffer less.

Today you won’t be the best parent you can ever be.

But you CAN be the best parent you can be today by working on what’s in front of you right now.

I’m a strategic planner at heart. Envisioning all possible scenarios and choosing the best path to the best solution is my default MO. Give me the dots and let me connect them!!

This works well for a community health project but, as I’ve found through personal experience, isn’t the best change model for forced identity transition.

Because in these scenarios you can’t figure out what all the dots are in advance.

So don’t spin your wheels trying to solve for something in the future.

Instead, stay in the present.

Work on today not tomorrow.

And be sure to come back tomorrow to learn about using the second principle—intuition.

In the meantime, what’s something you’ve had to rein in future planning around?

Julie Browne, LCSW
NEW NORMAL COACHING

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