Episode 108

How to Make Decisions During a Crisis Without Regretting Them

Transitions - Part 3

There's a popular saying that the Chinese word for crisis combines the characters for danger and opportunity. I first heard it in a political speech years ago, and I loved the idea. It sounds hopeful: something terrible may be happening, but hidden inside it is an opportunity waiting to be discovered.

It turns out that's not exactly what the word means. The second part is closer to an incipient moment or crucial turning point. And the more I've thought about that distinction, the more useful I think it is.

Because when you're in the middle of a real crisis, being told that it's secretly an opportunity can feel dismissive. You may be dealing with an unexpected medical diagnosis, the sudden loss of a job, or a devastating discovery in a relationship that requires you to make decisions you never wanted to make. You probably don't need someone telling you to look for the silver lining.

But a turning point? That's different. A crisis absolutely can be a turning point because it has a way of rearranging your life—and your priorities—without asking permission first.

When that happens, the question becomes: How do you make decisions during a crisis without letting the urgency and overwhelm make every decision for you?

There isn't a formula that makes a crisis easy. There are, however, ways to stay oriented toward what matters while you're moving through something you didn't choose.

Why a Crisis Changes Your Priorities So Quickly

I talk a lot about building a life around your priorities, but priorities aren't supposed to remain the same forever. They naturally change as your life changes.

What matters most when you have a newborn may look very different once your children are grown. Your priorities when you're working toward a promotion may change when you're ready to step back or hand responsibilities to someone else. These are meaningful transitions, but they're often transitions you can see coming.

Crisis doesn't usually give you that kind of warning.

An unexpected diagnosis, job loss, family emergency, financial upheaval, or relationship crisis can force your priorities to shift overnight. Things that seemed urgent yesterday suddenly don't matter very much, while something you barely had on your radar becomes the center of your life.

That can be incredibly disorienting, particularly for high-achieving people who are used to planning ahead, staying organized, and solving problems quickly. Your usual instinct may be to immediately figure out the new plan.

But sometimes the most useful first move isn't making the plan. It's recognizing that the circumstances have changed enough that your old priorities may no longer fit.

Crisis Can Create Clarity Without Being "Good"

A lot of my thinking about priorities began early in my career when I worked as an intern in psychosocial oncology.

Again and again, I heard cancer patients describe a complicated experience. They would never have wished the diagnosis on themselves, and they certainly weren't suggesting that cancer was somehow a gift. At the same time, many described how the experience had brought their priorities into sharp focus.

Things they had tolerated before no longer seemed tolerable. Relationships became more important. Some obligations became less important. They felt permission to make decisions around what mattered to them rather than continuing to live according to expectations that suddenly seemed much less significant.

That work shaped much of what I teach now about creating a priority-centered life.

The lesson wasn't that crisis is good because something positive might eventually come from it. That's too simplistic. The lesson was that crisis can force clarity we may not have reached otherwise.

That's the turning-point piece.

If you're in the middle of an unanticipated transition, you don't need to find the opportunity in it. You do need to recognize that the circumstances have changed, and you may need a different set of priorities to move through what comes next.

1. Access More Support Than You Think You Need

When life gets rearranged unexpectedly, this is not the moment to prove how much you can carry by yourself.

We are social creatures, and support matters enormously during difficult periods. That support may come from a partner, family member, close friend, physician, therapist, colleague, faith community, or another trusted person who can help you navigate what is happening.

The important thing is to be thoughtful about who gets access to you, particularly in the earliest stages of a crisis.

Well-meaning people can sometimes make a difficult situation harder. Someone hears that you've lost your job and immediately tells you what they did when they were laid off. Someone hears about a relationship crisis and has a very strong opinion about what you should do next. Someone learns about a medical issue and suddenly has a story about their neighbor's cousin who had the same thing.

Their intentions may be good. Their advice may not be.

In the early stages of a crisis, you may be making deeply personal decisions based on circumstances other people don't fully understand. Choose an inner circle that can listen, help you think, and support your decisions without making the situation about their own experiences.

Professional mental health support can also be an important part of that circle. It doesn't have to be something you seek only after you've exhausted every other option. A therapist can give you a place to process what is happening without having to manage the emotional reactions of someone who is personally involved in the situation.

2. Resist the Pressure to Make Every Decision Immediately

Crisis creates urgency, but not every decision that feels urgent actually needs to be made today.

When you're overwhelmed, your thinking can become focused on getting out of the discomfort as quickly as possible. You want an answer. You want a plan. You want to know what happens next because uncertainty itself is uncomfortable.

That can create pressure to make a major decision simply so you no longer have to sit in the unknown.

Before you do, ask a practical question: When does this decision actually have to be made?

Not when would you like the uncertainty to end. Not when does someone else want your answer. When is the real deadline?

You may discover that you have a few days, a week, or even longer to gather information and let the initial intensity settle before you decide.

That doesn't mean delaying indefinitely. Avoiding a decision long enough can eventually become a decision of its own, and the result may not be what you would have consciously chosen.

The goal is to find the space between reacting immediately and avoiding the decision entirely.

Give yourself a reasonable window. Get the information you need. Talk to the right people. Then make the decision from a more grounded place rather than assuming the loudest feeling in the first 24 hours has to determine what happens next.

3. Use Both Your Head and Your Gut

When a crisis forces you to rethink your priorities, facts matter. So do your feelings.

Let's say you're dealing with a family medical crisis while you're also responsible for an important project at work. On paper, there may be very good reasons for staying focused on your job. People are relying on you, deadlines are real, and your income may be particularly important right now.

At the same time, part of you may desperately want to be with your family.

That tension is information.

It isn't necessarily a problem you should muscle through or evidence that you're failing to be rational. Instead, look at both sides. What do the facts tell you? What does your emotional response tell you? What are the consequences of each option, and which consequences are you most willing to live with?

You may not arrive at a perfect answer because crises rarely offer perfect options. The goal isn't to find the choice that makes everything okay. It's to make the most thoughtful choice you can with the information, priorities, and capacity you have right now.

One tool that can help with this process is remarkably simple: write about it.

Why Writing Can Help During a Crisis

If you've ever dismissed journaling as a nice idea that isn't particularly practical, there's research worth knowing about.

Psychologist James Pennebaker and his colleagues studied professionals who had recently lost their jobs. Some participants wrote about their thoughts and feelings surrounding the job loss, while others wrote about non-emotional topics such as their plans and activities.

The people who wrote honestly about their thoughts and emotions were reemployed more quickly.

What's particularly interesting is that expressive writing didn't simply make the participants apply for more jobs. The researchers suggested that writing influenced how participants thought and felt about their previous jobs and finding new employment.

In other words, the benefit wasn't just "write down your feelings and you'll feel better." Putting the experience into words appeared to affect how people moved through what came next.

That's an important distinction.

Writing gives you a place to put thoughts that may otherwise keep circling in your head. It can help you notice contradictions, fears, values, and priorities that are harder to see when you're trying to think about everything at once.

You don't need a beautiful journal, a special prompt book, or an hour of uninterrupted time. You can open a notebook and start with a question such as:

What am I actually feeling about what happened?

Then write about the feelings rather than only the logistics.

If you've lost your job, don't limit yourself to a list of applications you need to submit. Write about what losing the job means to you. If you're navigating a relationship crisis, don't only make a pros-and-cons list. Write about the anger, grief, relief, confusion, fear, or hope underneath it.

Ten honest minutes is a reasonable place to start.

4. Remember That Your New Priorities Aren't Permanent

When a crisis forces you to redefine your priorities, it's tempting to think you need to come up with the new permanent plan.

You don't.

Crisis situations evolve. The information you have today may be different in a month. Your capacity may change. Medical circumstances may change. Financial realities may change. Relationships may change. Something that requires nearly all of your attention this week may require much less of it six months from now.

Your priorities are allowed to change along with those circumstances.

That means defining your priorities during a crisis isn't a one-time exercise. You may need to return to the question repeatedly: Given what I know now, what matters most right now?

Notice the two uses of "now" in that question.

You're not deciding what will matter most forever. You're orienting yourself to the season you're actually in.

That can also make it easier to communicate your changing priorities to the people around you. Maybe you're temporarily stepping back from a responsibility at work. Maybe your social availability is going to be limited. Maybe your family needs more from you right now, or perhaps you need to ask family members to take on things you've always handled yourself.

Those changes don't have to become permanent identities. They can be responses to the reality in front of you.

How Should You Make a Big Decision During a Crisis?

If you're facing a major decision while you're overwhelmed, begin by separating the actual deadline from the emotional pressure to decide.

Find out how much time you really have. Then gather the information necessary to understand your options, talk with a small number of trusted people, and notice what both the facts and your emotional response are telling you.

If possible, avoid making an irreversible decision during the first wave of shock unless circumstances truly require it. At the same time, give yourself a defined point when you'll revisit the decision so that "I need more time" doesn't quietly become indefinite avoidance.

The goal is not to remove emotion from the decision. It's to create enough space that emotion isn't the only thing making the decision.

How Do You Figure Out Your Priorities During a Crisis?

Start by accepting that the priorities you had before the crisis may not fit your life right now.

Ask yourself what genuinely requires your attention in this season, what can temporarily move down the list, and what you're continuing to do simply because it used to be important.

It may help to separate your priorities into three categories: what needs your attention now, what still matters but can receive less attention temporarily, and what can be released entirely for the moment.

This isn't failure to "keep up." It's adaptation.

A priority-centered life isn't one in which your priorities never change. It's one in which you're willing to notice when life has changed and make conscious decisions about how you're going to respond.

What Should You Avoid Doing During a Crisis?

Try not to crowdsource major decisions to everyone who cares about you.

Support and advice aren't the same thing. You can need a great deal of support while still being selective about whose opinions shape your choices.

It's also worth watching the urge to immediately turn the crisis into a lesson. You don't have to find the good in it. You don't have to be grateful for what it is teaching you. You don't have to decide that everything happens for a reason.

Sometimes something is simply painful, unfair, frightening, or unwanted.

Meaning can come later, if it comes at all.

For now, your job is to move through what is happening in a way that keeps you connected to the people, values, responsibilities, and parts of yourself that matter most.

A Crisis Is a Turning Point, Not an Assignment to Find the Silver Lining

There is a meaningful difference between saying a crisis is an opportunity and saying it's a turning point.

The first can create pressure to find something positive inside an experience that may be genuinely devastating. The second simply acknowledges reality: something has changed, and the path forward may look different because of it.

You don't have to be happy about that change to respond to it intentionally.

Access more support than you think you need, while being thoughtful about who you invite into your inner circle. Give yourself a reasonable amount of time before making major decisions when circumstances allow it. Pay attention to both the facts and your feelings. Write about what's happening instead of letting every thought continue to circle inside your head. And remember that the priorities you establish today can change as the crisis changes.

None of those things makes an unexpected diagnosis, job loss, relationship rupture, or family emergency easy. They're not supposed to.

But there is a difference between having something you didn't choose throw you completely off course and finding ways to stay oriented while the course itself is changing.

If you're in that kind of season right now, you don't need to know what the rest of your life looks like.

You need to know what matters now.

Start by getting clear on what matters most

When life changes quickly, it can become difficult to distinguish between what's truly important and what's simply demanding your attention. The free Prior 10 Assessment can help you take a closer look at where your time and energy are going and identify the priorities that deserve your attention in this season.

If you're currently dealing with a significant crisis, remember that an assessment or productivity tool isn't a substitute for professional support. Your physician, therapist, or another qualified professional may need to be part of the team helping you navigate what comes next.

And if you want one simple thing to try today, set a timer for ten minutes and write about what's weighing on you. Skip the to-do list for now and write about what you actually think and feel about what's happening. You may discover that getting it out of your head helps you see the situation—and what matters within it—a little more clearly.

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The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.