
What is the difference between problem, conflict and crisis?
I'll explain it to you with an everyday event.
If I'm sunbathing on the beach and I see my daughter drowning, I have a problem.
Life tells me: stop what you're doing, and just as you are, go rescue her in time. Because it's an emergency and seconds count.
That's a problem.
The problem invites you to act: Stop what you are doing for her to save her.
Second case:
If I'm on the same beach, and my daughter is drowning, but I don't know how to swim, then I don't have a problem, I have a crisis.
And then I ask myself, how can I do anything if I don't know how to swim? What options do I have if I haven't prepared myself to have the necessary conditions to respond to the problems that life presents me now?
And life will answer me: stop BEING what you are until today and take a forced leap to be better by doing what you have perhaps never done.
Because you have been a standard human being and today you need to be extraordinary. Use all the resources at your disposal to save her: a rope, a branch, or even jump into the water yourself, trying to rescue her with the little you know how to swim.
The problem is to make it understood.
The crisis is there to be interpreted and to demand something extra from you: to take you out of the ordinary to be extraordinary.
The problem is solved by our way of acting and doing things.
The crisis is resolved by changing your way of being
And where is the conflict?
If I am sunbathing on a deserted beach and my daughter is drowning, I don't see the problem to solve, nor do I go into crisis to make a decision to take the risk of rescuing her, even if she doesn't know how to swim. And I stay stuck arguing inside myself about what would be the best thing to do while I watch her drown. This is a conflict where fighting to make decisions paralyzed me and wearing me out does not resolve my problem or the crisis.
And my daughter is drowning.
Thank you for reading me.
DrRoch