A brisk lesson on dealing with crises from Dr Maxwell Maltz, writing in his classic, Psycho-Cybernetics: 

"Successful people are able to rise above crises by relaxing no matter what the external situation.

Their believe in themselves, the strength of their self-image is impenetrable armour, which protects them against shattering events."

Interestingly, Dr Maltz added these astute observations:

"Stand up to crises. Don't let them throw you. Fight to stay calm... even surmount the crisis completely and turn it into an opportunity. Refuse to renounce your self-image. No matter what happens, you must keep your good opinion of yourself. No matter what happens, you must hold your past successes in your imagination, ready for showing in the motion picture screen of your mind. No matter what happens, no matter what you lose, no matter what failures you must endure, you must keep faith in yourself. Then you can stand up to crises, with calm and courage, refusing to buckle then you will not fall through the floor. You will be able to support yourself."

“Close scrutiny will show that most 'crisis situations' are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.”

The essential points of these astute observations of Dr Maxwell Maltz are, at least from my perspective:

- to stay calm, serene, and always in command of yourself;

- to stay true to your self image of being engineered as a goal-seeking and success mechanism, just as Dr Maltz put it; [also, not forgetting the words of wisdom from Zig Ziglar:

"You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness."

- to pause and reflect, contemplate and introspect about what has happened;

- to reset, re-adjust, re-start and re-focus on the next move;

- to draw inspiration from the Chinese phrase for "crisis": 危机 (pronounced as "wéijī") ~ interestingly, the first part stands for danger; the other part for opportunity.

So in a crisis, just be aware of the danger – but recognize - and seize - the opportunity!

- to draw lessons from Henry Ford's elegant words of wisdom:

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."