A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go though the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.–Mildred White Struven

Every so often you just have to fall down, bruise your knees, curse for a while and then pull yourself back up to your feet. If you aren’t ever given the opportunity to do this, you can’t go anywhere.

Crisis, the pressure to fight against pressure, is one of the most important elements of entrepreneurship, of creativity, of human life.

Why?

Crisis teaches us lessons, the most important of which is where we really want to be. There is something about comfort that tames us, that makes us complacent. Comfort eats away at that little voice inside of you that says that the world can be better and it’s your job to make it that way. It’s why the children of the very wealthy often have such a hard time doing something with all of their wealth, they are never given the opportunity to overcome crisis, to get back up and see where they stand and where they want to stand.

Don’t get me wrong, I love nothing more than being comfortable. I wish I could go more than a few months at a time rolling around in self-contentment, but fortunately enough for me crisis has a way of tracking me down and when it arrives I realize just how much I missed it during the off-season.

How can you make the most of crisis?

Don’t lose track of what it’s actually trying to teach you.

Whether you just lost your keys or lost a contract learn to use that stress to gird yourself against that problem it happening again. Find an organization strategy that will keep your stuff from disappearing every three hours, discover a new way to work better, smarter and faster to keep whatever slipup that lead to you losing the account from happening again or maybe discover you should not be working with that type of client in the first place.

Use your crisis as a force for creativity.

Whatever doesn’t kill you may not make you stronger, but if you treat it the right way it can certainly make you better.

While you’re here, take a free peek at my book on creativity and building ideas: All The Little Things

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