How to Achieve Well-Being After a Crisis

How do you shift from the darkness of personal crisis to well-being and flourishing as a servant leader? To make such a shift requires not just a discovery of who we are at the Core but a choosing to tap into the character and virtues that define it.

Over three years ago, only months after I graduated as Severn Leadership Group Fellow, I experienced a stroke that caused neurological chaos throughout my body. Electrifying pain, hypersensitivity to sound, light, and motion, as well as an inability to speak clearly consumed me.

It took over a year and a half to get a diagnosis. So for a very long time, I did not understand what was causing such devastating dysfunction. This personal crisis was sudden, extensive, and enduring.

Today, I am blessed to enjoy an incredible breadth of recovery that allows me to speak clearly, manage my pain and vertigo, as well as engage relatively easily in public spaces. I have achieved and continue to develop well-being.

Looking back over this long and arduous journey from crisis to flourishing, I recognize the path to well-being that Severn Leadership Group outlines in the SLG Individual Change Mode; high self-reflection and high-virtue recognition.

When I first got sick, I was overwhelmed by fear and isolation. The loss and grief were almost paralyzing as I mourned who I no longer was and the person I may never be. As I stripped away the outer layers of how I once defined myself, my Core was laid bare.

Nothing crystallizes your values more than a personal crisis. At this point, I had a choice to make: allow fear to consume me or tap into the inner strength of my Core.

Reflection brought me to a place of understanding.

I feared running out of time to fulfill my soul purpose as a servant leader. I mourned misspent years. This mourning underscored my recognition of the need for the virtues of love, truth, and excellence in my life.

My fear also stemmed from how my illness impacted my “tweenage” children. I grieved a future that we no longer would have. But I saw an opportunity to model flourishing for them by clearly communicating my strengths and weaknesses.

I committed to demonstrating my strength of resilience and a willingness to acknowledge my need for help from others. This commitment highlighted my need for living the virtues of love, truth, excellence, and cultivating healthy relationships.

Ultimately, deciding between the fear and tapping into my Core equated to choosing between surviving and thriving. To allow fear to take the steering wheel was completely out of alignment with who I am at the Core AND how I wanted to show up for myself and others.

In the darkest days of a personal crisis, a large part of the struggle comes from falling out of alignment with your core values. This dark place is where integrity and truth are needed most.

The path to well-being demands that we live out our values by integrating our desires with thoughts, words, and actions. Yet, it is only through self-reflection that we can evaluate how well our behavior matches our desires, thoughts, and words.  

When you face a crisis, fear, overwhelm and grief easily set in. However, you must not let these emotions paralyze you. Rather my hope is that you remember the power of self-reflection to connect you to your CORE strengths of love, integrity, truth, excellence and relationships. This connection will catalyze clarity and action towards authentic well-being.