risk Archives - Page 2 of 3

Overcoming Fear. Woman hoarding toilet paper.

April 25, 2020April 5, 2020 by Pete Wiley

Changing Perspectives—Overcoming Our Fear-Driven Behaviors

A crisis is a great opportunity to get to know ourselves better.

Some may aspire to great ideals, but when faced with a crisis, they revert to fear-driven behaviors, such as hoarding. It can be helpful to examine how we’re assessing the crisis, in terms of its potential impact both on us and on our communities. It’s also tremendously important to assess our own emotional journeys and thought processes when a crisis arises. We can feel worry, anxiety, and fear during a crisis, and those feelings can be overwhelming. They can drive us to engage in activities that we believe will give us some control over the situation. It takes honest and intense introspection and reflection to understand our feelings, how they drive us to certain behaviors, and how we might redirect those feelings into more constructive behaviors.

April 4, 2020March 29, 2020 by Pete Wiley

Waiting for the Worst—Coping with a Gradual Disaster

Times like these can feel like a slow car accident. You’re in a skid and you know the crash is coming, but it hasn’t arrived yet.

Reading the news and learning about the severity and extent of the disease—the number of deaths and the impact on the economy—can cause a state of extreme stress and anxiety. Then you go about your day, and you experience all the typical sounds of your house. You see cars going by as if nothing has changed. You run into people you know at the grocery store and chat about your kids and how your families are holding up. You stop and get gas on your way home. Even though circumstances are inexorably changed, so many aspects of our lives feel exactly the same.

June 8, 2019December 22, 2018 by Pete Wiley

Failure

Failure is an option.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

As we go through our lives, we each make decisions about what we are going to do – in our jobs and in our personal lives, the big things and the small things, the important and the trivial. Part of what goes into those decisions are the consequences if we fail.

If we think we might fail, we worry that we’ll waste our time, that we could get hurt or embarrassed, or that the consequences will be dire. We fear failure. We worry about failure. We try to avoid failure.

But if we only do things that guarantee success, we are doing ourselves a disservice. We are not exploring our own personal boundaries. We are not testing ourselves. We’ll never find out what we’re made of.

in Open Mind / Proactive 0 comments

January 19, 2019September 30, 2018 by Pete Wiley

Obstacles

What is stopping you from living a great life?

Is it something that can be overcome? Is it a legitimate excuse? Is it real, or is it something you use to rationalize your limitations?

All of us have obstacles. Sometimes we acknowledge them. Sometimes we address them. Sometimes we overcome them.

However, sometimes we incorporate them into our lives.

in Open Mind / Proactive 0 comments

February 17, 2018September 4, 2017 by Pete Wiley

Trust

How many people in the world do you trust completely?

People you trust not to lie to you, cheat you, or steal from you—this is garden-variety trust.

How many people do you trust enough for you to share who you really are? How many people do you know in your heart have your back? How many people could you trust with your life?

Try to list those people.

For many of us, the number of people like that in our lives can be counted on one hand, and the truth is we are lucky if we have one or two. But before we start weeping silently into our oatmeal, let’s think about the dynamics of what it takes to be trustworthy.

Each of us has to trust ourselves first. If we don’t, we lack the fundamental basis for trust. We have to trust ourselves that we will act in our own best interest. We have to trust that we will create a life for ourselves that we can use as a foundation to do great things. We have to trust that we will give ourselves a stable emotional base.

in Emotions / Proactive 0 comments