Life is like photography–we use the negative to develop.   – Swami Beyondanada

What do you do when…
…a client complains?…your finances take a nose dive?…you get rejected for the job you want?…your boss loads you down with another work deadline?…the world seems full of social and environmental injustice?…your teen calls you phat-phree?

Your genetically programmed response

That response is to immediately look at the bright side, to see the gift, and to view it as a wonderful opportunity to develop. Right?  Wrong. The old back brain gets triggered, and you’re in fight or flight response. You get sarcastic, passive-aggressive, petty or crawl in your cave and watch Frasier reruns. That is your genetically programmed response to bad news. In other words, it’s normal. Of course, you could re-program your response pattern. That is what neuro-scientists are now telling us.

How to un-trigger yourself

So what does it mean to upgrade your operating system? Apparently, you can train your brain to stay relaxed, trusting, happy or confident under normally “triggering” events. You simply need to remember times when you’ve done it before and then create a habit or ritual to anchor it. Remember the last time someone else felt triggered and it didn’t bother you at all? Here’s a simple example. I was driving on a rainy day and my wipers were on. After about 10 minutes in the car my friend in the passenger seat blurted out, “Those wipers are driving me crazy! Can you please turn them off!” I hadn’t even noticed they were squeaking. Squeaking wipers used bother me, but now they don’t. Unconsciously, I somehow trained myself to be “untriggered” by that sound. What would you like to train yourself to be untriggered by?

Negativity seeds creativity

Necessity is the mother of invention. All negativity can be the fuel for a new possibilities. Negativity is like the black soil that provides a base for the rose to grow, or it’s like the black oil that runs your motor car, or like the black liquorice that gets you through that late afternoon slump. I know, I know, now I’m mixing bad metaphors.

But if you think back on challenging experiences personally, in your community or in history, you can almost always see how they seeded something new and creative. At the personal level, I can think of the time I bought all that Nortel stock just before it tanked. It motivated me to learn about real estate investing, which I grew to love. Many historians say that the Renaissance in Europe was seeded by the Plague. One third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages died from the Plague. The surviving relatives took their inheritances and funded scientists, inventors and artists to help their society re-invent itself so that something like the Plague wouldn’t happen again.

Times of crisis are easiest to convince people (or yourself) to try something new, because clearly the old just isn’t working anymore.

Train yourself to see negativity as the seed for re-invention

One way to un-trigger yourself is to form a habit of seeing negativity as the seed of new development. For example, crazy weather (and large chunks of Antarctica falling into the sea) may be seeding the environmental movement like never before. The overburdened health care system may be seeding the wellness movement. My monthly fuel cost is seeding my desire to walk more often. Negativity can be the kick in the butt we all need to finally make a creative change. Just remember as innovation expert Sir Ken Robinson says “In the coming decade creativity will be as important as literary.”

Try the Re-invention Brainstorm

What many organizations do is to take something negative affecting their work or industry and brainstorm on what reinvention it may be seeding. For example, 9/11 caused the meetings industry to slow down significantly. As a result, some industry leaders brainstormed and decided to focus resources in other areas. Lo and behold great inroads were made into webinars and tele-seminars. Paul Hawken in his book Blessed Unrest talks about a huge social and environmental movement afoot on a global scale today (and why no one saw it coming). Watch this inspiring 5 minute YouTube clip for details.

Send us a tip or a story

Plan a 30 minute Re-invention Brainstorm with your organization. It could start a revolution. If you have a story or tip about how you re-invented yourself after a crises, feel free to let us know. We are always looking for great case studies.