Finding Purpose in Crisis: From Survival to Flourishing

I once had the opportunity to run an organization.  It was populated with magnificent people.  Yet one of the most surprising things to me was their tendency to work mindlessly.  Many would do what they did the day before in the same manner.  There was no sense that they could reinvent what they were doing in ways that were more engaging and more effective.
It turns out that most people on the planet are living in a survival mentality.  This is true of the global workforce and also true of slightly more than half the managerial workforce.  The lives of most of us are not driven by purpose. There is a tendency to drift into a reactive state.
Paradoxically, one thing that tends to transform us is our desire to survive.  We see this in crisis.  As individuals we may need to cope with physical illness, the death of a loved one, divorce, abusive treatment, burnout, job loss or other life demands. In organizations we may need to cope with recession, new competitors, regulatory changes, evolving customer preferences and many other such challenges.
Dark clouds and other signals of danger usually precede these storms.  The signals often call for a transformation, or deep change. We tend to resist the call. When our old habits of thought and action seem to be ever less effective in the face of the change, we are slow to abandon them in favor of learning our way into an elevated state.
To move forward into the storm of real-time learning is no easy decision.  Often I get frustrated because I am doing everything I can think of to solve a problem, and the more I apply my logic, the worse things get.  This is a sign that I am in a trap.  The more I analyze and work at the issue, the more the problem grows, causing me to work harder.  If I continue, I will eventually have a failure and an ego collapse.
In the crisis I come to the point that I must choose between being a paralyzed victim and moving forward in a proactive way.  Making the decision triggers a process of transformation or deep change.  As I become more intentional, I turn fear into faith.  A vision emerges.  I see possibility and I move forward trying to create it.  I am no longer fleeing from a problem.  I am in the process of creating a result.  It is a different way of being.  I move from an orientation to survival to a focus on flourishing.