By Anthony (Tony) J. D’Angelo, The Collegiate Empowerment Company, Inc. © & ™ 1995-2020 All Rights Reserved.
If you’re like the average American Higher Education Professional, you know this hasn’t been an average week. As Vladmir Lenin once said, “There are decades in which nothing happens. And then there are weeks in which decades happen.” While I’m certainly not a fan of Lenin, this certainly has been one of those weeks. We are closing out week number three of confronting this unprecedented and unpredictable experience.
Yet, our job remains the same. Our job is to increase the clarity, confidence, capability, and commitment to the work we do, to our staff, and most of all, to the students and families we serve. You've been shattered and you've been rattled. And that’s okay. These are no doubt scary times. We at Collegiate Empowerment want to introduce a tool to remind you why you do this good work, and how to keep doing it during these scary times.
The tool is called The Scary Times Transformer™, a new Collegiate Empowerment tool to help you think about your thinking. The purpose of this tool is to help you bring forward insights, skills, and mindsets from your past scary times experiences to help you become stronger, wiser, and better during this scary time. Think about a scary time from your past. It could be personal or professional. Maybe it was a rocky relationship, a health scare, or the loss of a loved one. Maybe you survived a sexual assault or experienced a natural disaster. The purpose of recalling these experiences is not to trigger you, but to anchor you. All your progress starts by honoring that you've been through tough times like this before. Here are the 10 steps of The Scary Times Transformer to bring forward your wisdom, your strength, and your courage from your past struggles into these scary times:
1) Identify the Event: What was a scary time in your own life? How do you refer to it?
My first really big scary time happened when I was in second grade. I grew up less than 10 miles from the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant near the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred, the worst nuclear disaster ever in US history. My whole life as a seven year old little boy was turned upside down. My family had to be evacuated from our home. Just as our Nation is in lockdown right now, we had to evacuate because of the potential of nuclear fallout and radiation. Anybody from South Central Pennsylvania who survived the Three Mile Island accident knows it by TMI. That’s my scary time. What do you call your scary time?
2) Name the Date When did it happen? Write down the date, the year, the month, and the season.
In my personal example, TMI happened on Wednesday, March 28th, 1979. Almost 41 years to the date of The COVID-19 Shutdown. When did your scary time happen?
3) How old were you when the event happened and what was going on in your life?
It’s important to honor the stage of life you were in during these scary times. During TMI, I was seven years old. I was your average kid in elementary school; nothing big, just a basic life in working class small town America. A basic life that was quickly interrupted by a major event. How old were you when your scary time happened?
4) Identify the Location: Where did the event take place?
Almost every American remembers where they were on 9/11. What about you? The same is true of your scary time. For me, I learned of TMI while sitting on the “red reading carpet” in my second grade classroom at Manor Elementary school. I remember my teacher, Mrs. Cline, holding up a copy of The Patriot News, the local newspaper. I remember the photo of the large cooling towers on the front page. I remember it like yesterday. Where did your scary time take place?
5) What’s your Strongest Memory?
My strongest memory of Three Mile Island started back on that carpet in my second grade classroom. As Mrs. Cline held up the paper and said, “Class, there's been an accident at the nuclear power plant and we're not going to have school for the rest of today.” Of course, we all cheered! Then my buddy, Jon Verrecchio, one of the smartest kids in the class, interrupted us with, “You guys don't understand. We're all gonna die!” In that moment, our second grade cheers turned to major tears. Fortunately for all, our parents were already in front of the school to safely take us home. What’s your strongest memory of your scary time?
6) Identify your Biggest Insight.
During the TMI experience, I realized how important it was to have family close by in my life. When I was in my 20s, I didn't move to Silicon Valley or Seattle, like many of my Gen X’ers were doing. I wanted to stay close to family. At age 7, I learned how important it is to have family within driving distance. I knew from the scary time of TMI how important they are to me and it’s one of the main reasons I still live in Pennsylvania today: Family. What’s your biggest insight from your scary time that continues to impact your life today?
7) Acknowledge How You’ve Gotten Better
After TMI, I paid closer attention to current events and world affairs. I also developed a mindset of, “The only constant in life is change and you’ve got to be prepared to adapt.” This has carried into my life today. It’s not a mindset of fear. It’s a mindset of being prepared. As an American entrepreneur, I have learned to always expect the best, yet also plan for the worst. This mindset has empowered me to be prepared for not only this scary time, but the other 14 or so other scary times I’ve been through in my life. It’s what buoys me through times like these. What mindsets did you develop from going through your scary time that can help you today? How have you gotten better?
8) Identify New Skills and New Ways of Being
One of the new ways of being I learned from TMI was understanding that it's okay to be afraid. Having fear and facing it was a huge transformation for me. Ten years after Three Mile Island, I learned how to water ski along the Susquehanna River in front of those big, intimidating cooling towers. At seven, those towers terrified me. At seventeen, I water skied in front of them with a new sense of courage. This new way of being, this new mindset that, “Feeling the fear and doing it anyway” was a powerful learned skill. What new skills and new ways of being has your scary time brought to your life?
9) Recognize any Regrets
We learn from our regrets. Pain is a powerful teacher. By examining what we failed to do, we learn better what we need to do in present and future scary times. Oscar Wilde said, “It is not the sins of commission that we regret. It's the sins of omission.” It's not the things we do, it's the things we don't do. I was only seven when TMI happened. I was just a kid, so I honestly don’t have any regrets from this specific scary time. However as I have reviewed all my scary times over my life, I have found a few consistent themes of regret. One of those is not asking for help sooner, when I found myself in the midst of a scary time. Way too many times I tried to “suck it up” and do it by myself. At age 48 I can honestly say, life is way too hard to do it all by yourself. Thanks to the regrets of my past, I have finally learned it’s not only okay to ask for help, it’s essential for lasting success. What about you? What regrets do you have from your scary time?
10) Identify What to Bring Forward
After you work through all the memories, all the insights, how you got better, the new skills, the new ways of being, and your regrets, you must ask, “What am I going to bring forward?” What are you going to bring forward from your scary time into your current reality? How can you mine your experience to transform what you're going through right now during this scary time in 2020?
Is this scary time going to make you or is it going to break you?
Are you going to crash and crumble? Or are you going to grow and transform?
Take a breath and give yourself the grace to remember you have been through scary times before.
You're guided, you’re grounded, you’re blessed. This too shall pass.
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Anthony (Tony) J. D’Angelo, is founder & Chief Visionary Officer of Collegiate Empowerment, a educational production company dedicated to serving the US Higher Education Industry. Since 1995, Tony has served as a coach and strategic consultant to thousands of Higher Education Professionals and University Executives from over 2,500 US colleges. Learn more @ www.Collegiate-Empowerment.org or Follow: @TonyDAngelo on Twitter.
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Anthony J. D’Angelo & The Collegiate Empowerment Company, Inc. © & ™ 1995-2020 All Rights Reserved.