We live in a society that expects us to constantly perform well, not have any slumps, get along well with all our colleagues and always come to work with a smile on our faces. After all, work should not only be work, but also deliver self-fulfillment and purpose.
In our private lives, the pressure to be perfect is just as great. Doing sports regularly, constantly drinking green smoothies, having a relationship, (especially for women this seems to be extremely relevant) and constantly accept ourselves and love our body. At the same time, of course, we must not be too perfect. After all, we should remain approachable and authentic.
It seems, we’re in the middle of a New Age revival where we are supposed to love ourselves, everything and everyone around us. Unlike in the 60s and 70s, however, we are not allowed to take drugs to achieve this state.
Our consumer orientation leads us to not only desire more objects, but also more satisfaction and more happiness. With this constant pressure to achieve perfection, meaning and self-love, there is little room for doubt. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we spend more time alone and therefore have more time to deal with ourselves. Naturally, doubts and questions arise in the process. The balls of our different areas of life, which we so laboriously keep in the air, do not become easier to handle when we start to think about whether we are focusing on the right balls. We fall into a state of shock and must first accept that not everything is going to be as wonderful as we would like.
The next impulse is often to just throw everything away. Stop juggling and just let all the balls fall to the ground. Of course, there are certain circumstances and conditions that make an immediate exit necessary. However, most of the time the trigger for our crisis is not due to external factors but within ourselves. We cannot solve these issues in the long term by simply changing external factors.
We need to strengthen our personal resilience to endure a crisis while identifying what triggers it. Only when we know what has actually caused and triggered the crisis, we can do something to sustainably solve it. Capture the status quo – identify triggers and levers – find and implement solutions: a classic consulting approach that is also applicable to a personal crisis.
We just must accept that in this process we will also drop a few balls and shatter illusions. Fortunately, this is usually not a bad thing. Failure is a normal part of life and strengthens our personal resilience. The fear of failure is usually worse than the failure itself. That’s why we should all have more courage to fail.
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