Imagine yourself at the counter with your four-year-old child when she suddenly bursts into tears because you forgot to buy her something she requested from the shop. What would you do if the clerk was impatiently waiting for you to pay, there was a long queue of people behind you and your daughter was crying? Making timely decisions when under pressure is something we need to deal with every single day, let alone in critical situations.
Leading and making decisions in tough times is something I learned to do when I was a teenager. The civil war started in my country when I was just 10 years of age. I must admit nothing positive came out of this war other than the endless tests of resiliency and fast decision-making I was put under.
Leading and making decisions in tough times is something I learned to do when I was a teenager. The civil war started in my country when I was just 10 years of age. I must admit nothing positive came out of this war other than the endless tests of resiliency and fast decision-making I was put under.
“There exist some evils so terrible and some
misfortunes so horrible that we dare not think of them, whilst their very
aspect makes us shudder; but if they happen to fall on us, we find ourselves
stronger than we imagined, we grapple with our ill luck, and behave better than
we expected we should.” —Jean de La Bruyere
One such test
I recall is when my sister and I went to our country home to spend a weekend.
It was in the spring, all was quiet and serene on that day, but suddenly and
while we were sleeping at night heavy shelling started, splashing our quiet neighborhood with hundreds of heavy
bombs. Two years earlier, our home was directly hit by a shell fully destroying
the bedroom my older sister and I were sharing that night.
The first thing
that came to my sister's mind was the previous destruction of our bedroom.
She jumped out of bed and started to scream, asking me to immediately get out
of the house and take refuge at our aunt’s place, 100 meters away. Seeing
my sister’s despair and evaluating the danger she was putting herself—and myself—into,
I became strangely calm and ordered her to remain inside the house. I
explained to her that it was very unlikely that our bedroom would get
hit again and that the showering of debris outside could be far more dangerous
to us. I brought my sister back from the door to a different, lightly more
secure room and asked her to calm down. At that moment, I was no longer the
sweet 17-year-old teen everybody including myself considered; I was fearless,
strong and in total focus to deal with any emergency. And we survived that
night!
"I must not fear. Fear is the
mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will
face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has
gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone
there will be nothing. Only I will remain." — Frank Herbert
Unlike some other
youths who are brought up in a peaceful place, where they have to deal with
simple situations, like deciding what to wear for the prom or where to go to
meet cool people, I had a different type of problems to handle. For
example, which road should I take to get home safely when the shelling
starts? Should I go to the university the day after a night of full bombardment?
Should I travel abroad, to seek further education and challenge myself or
despair and remain where I am?
Dealing with these
types of critical questions made me who I am now. And if I have learned
anything from those fifteen years of civil war, I have learned the following:
v Remaining calm is the best attitude one can have when put under sheer pressure.
v When confronting a
fork in the road, it does not matter which decision we make. What matters is never to look back and to keep
going.
v Be courageous and have the strength to move on and start a
new day in spite of yesterday’s problems. Life goes on with or without us.
v Never despair. Whenever there
is no way out, we will always be able to find “our way” out of any crisis from
deep within.
v Surround yourself with people you love. This is more useful than going to hide in
faraway places, alone with your thoughts, fears and problems.
“I have been sustained throughout my life by
three saving graces—my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of
resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times, and
they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.”
—Elizabeth Edwards
