Crisis Archives - Steve Rodgers

This is the third part of a three-part series of posts.

Part One focused on the practical steps we can take in our daily lives and our business and work lives.

Part Two talked about how this event can aid us in discovering what is truly important in our lives as we take the big picture perspective and discover compassion and our greater unity as Human Beings.

Part Three addresses the deeper, spiritual significance of this event and how you can view it from an IGI perspective that will help you navigate these chaotic times and evolve to experience more goodness in all aspects of your life.

The current coronavirus pandemic is creating a lot of fear and uncertainty in individuals throughout the entire world. It can be tempting to succumb to fear and despair over possible negative outcomes, as well as fall into anger at other people and political leaders who we feel aren’t responding adequately.

However, by remembering to look at this situation from the perspective of IGI we can ask, “How can I invite goodness into this circumstance? How can I suspend my judgment of this event and open to the possibility that it may serve a valuable purpose?” Perhaps the coronavirus is a great opportunity to evolve to be more of your true self.

Lead to Gold – Crisis to Opportunity

By inviting more God or goodness into our lives because of this virus and embracing what’s happening right now, we can discover whether some good can come from this.

We can take a broader perspective and see a divine purpose for the coronavirus. Mother nature and the universe have a greater intelligence than we can often understand, and perhaps this pandemic is a necessary event that humanity will ultimately benefit from.

When we think back on crises in our society like September 11, or personal crises such as immediate and unfortunate death, or businesses that have crumbled, or people that get cancer. These are very tragic and challenging things that happen, but there’s/always/immediate good that comes from that.

This may take the form of people discovering greater compassion for others as they express love and support for others. In such tragedies, people are challenged to dig deeper and find empathy where they maybe would not have felt it before. These life-changing events shake us up and remind us of what is important and many start questioning to find the meaning of life and looking at what life is all about.

How You Can Use This Situation to Transition, Transform, and Evolve

I encourage everyone to look at this event at the deepest level rather than the superficial and ask themselves: “What can I learn from it? How can I grow from it? How can I be a better spiritual human being? How can I take a better inventory of my life and correct the things that weren’t working and help make a difference for others? How can I better my products, services, companies, governments, and schools?”

Reflect on how you can best use this time, whether it’s two weeks, four weeks, or longer of slowing down and being at home quarantined. Use this time when you’re not dealing with clients to start working on that project you were going to start, that thing you were going to invent, the music you were going to make, the art piece that you were going to create, or that relationship you were going to mend.

Mother Nature and God know exactly what they’re doing and if you follow the flow of life and use this time well you will discover many benefits.

Lessons and Benefits

If we learn the lessons that this current manifestation in our lives brings, we can evolve and learn what we need to learn to become more intelligent and more loving. And the great thing is that once we have learned the lesson, the teacher no longer needs to stick around and can leave.

This global pandemic is causing us to shift in various ways. This virus is a gift showing us how to slow down our frenetic, crazy activity. We are always on the go and rushing from one thing to another and now everyone is forced to slow down – even when we didn’t think we could. It offers us the chance to step away from our busy lives and instead spend quality time with our loved ones and in introspection.

This can also be a time to activate networks of cooperation, as people are stepping up to cooperate and reach a hand out to a neighbor who needs help, or to another company in your community. Many people have been helped through this process and made better people because of giving hands and open hearts.

This virus also sends a very clear message that we are in a global world whether we want to admit it or not. What happens to one country’s economy and health becomes a butterfly effect that affects the whole world. We may see that this event has caused the world to come together in solidarity and recognize our fundamental interconnectedness. We are all doing our best to learn from each other and meet this challenge collectively.

One could also look at this as a sort of worldwide cleansing and detoxification process. God or Life’s infinite wisdom knows that there needs to be a cleansing of our physical bodies, our psyches, our egos, our ecosystems, and the structures of our society so that we can be more healthy.

From this perspective, I don’t look at this as a punishment. I look at this as a blessing for the evolution of humanity and that this is simply the way the planet works and the way mother nature works. The ecosystem of plants, animals, organisms, and viruses is all so intertwined. Perhaps, this event will help us realize this and cause us to become more conscious of our interrelatedness with all life on Earth.

Transmuting Our Fear

One of the main issues that the coronavirus is reflecting on us all is our relationship with fear. We can look at this virus as an invitation for each one of us to face our root fear – that of survival. In the face of a global pandemic that the media is all too willing to obsess about, it is an opportunity to face that primal fear of survival and reaffirm that we are OK and we are going to be OK.

At a similarly trying time in America’s history during the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt admonished the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. At a time when financial panic was threatening to cause masses of people to rush to the banks and withdraw all their money, FDR rightly pointed out that the situation was not insurmountable in itself. It is only when people panic and give in to irrational fear that results in chaos and cause real damage. Likewise, this coronavirus pandemic is manageable if everyone stays calm and works together to meet this challenge.

As long as we take care of our physical, mental, and spiritual health we cannot be harmed by anything outside of ourselves and even if we contract the virus we will be able to heal from it. Rather than living in fear of something that is outside of our control, we can then surrender and trust that there is a greater intelligence at work in our lives and that intelligence is giving us exactly what we need to experience in order to evolve.

I know that the coronavirus is inconvenient for many of us and it also brings up a lot of fear. Not only our fear of death, but it is also scary for people who are going to have less income or possibly will have companies close or lose jobs. Remember that this too shall pass.

Our grandparents and parents went through the Great Depression or World War I and II or more recently we all experienced the life-changing event of September 11th. In these events, some people tragically lose their lives and some lose their loved ones. But those who live and those who grow from this experience know that this too shall pass and this will be something we will look back on and recognize that it was a difficult and trying time, but it also was necessary in the grand scheme of things to bring to the forefront things about ourselves and our civilization that need to change.

I anticipate this current situation resulting in long-term ripple effects that will contribute to humanity taking a quantum leap to another level of evolution and higher consciousness as a species, as individual countries, and as a world globally. We can all look out for simultaneously big changes in the economy, healthcare, and all other areas of our society.

I invite you to contact me to find out how I can assist you in navigating this current situation to come through the eye of the storm in your personal and professional life and transmute this crisis into greater opportunity and success for yourself and your work.

This is the first part of a three-part series of posts. This article focuses on the practical steps we can take in our daily lives and in our business during the coronavirus event.

Part Two invites you to consider how this event can aid us in discovering what is truly important in our lives as we take the big picture perspective and discover compassion and our greater unity as Human Beings.

Part Three will address the deeper, spiritual significance of this event and how you can view it from an IGI perspective that will help you navigate these chaotic times and evolve to experience more goodness in all aspects of your life.

Right now, everyone is getting bombarded with messages about the Coronavirus as we all hunker down in our homes and wait out this storm. In this message, I would like to share the perspective that I am taking for myself, my family, and my clients, and how you can take a wider perspective of this event in your personal and professional life. These are some tips that can help your business during the coronavirus.

The IGI Principles

As all of California has been ordered to stay at home, I am in the process of finishing my new book called The IGI Principles: The Power of Inviting Good In vs Edging Good Out. I am very excited to share it with the world and expect it to be released in the next month or two.

This book is the culmination of a lifetime of work in both the fields of business and in my spiritual path, resulting in the term IGI, or Inviting God In. IGI is the exact opposite of the word ego and represents the power of inviting God, goodness, or whatever you call the higher power, into your life rather than edging God out through selfishness and fear.

All things in our lives can be informed by this idea of IGI, and the current situation is no exception. This pandemic is an opportunity to learn to invite more goodness into your life and to see how you can turn crisis into opportunity, lead into gold. I’m keeping that perspective for myself, my family and friends, and my clients. I believe that this is a perspective that can greatly benefit yourself, your business or organization, and the world as a whole which needs level-headed people who meet this situation with Spiritual Intelligence.

Here is my new website where you can find more information about the new book and how to order it so you receive a copy when it is released. Until then, expect more blog posts and messages from me containing simple and practical IGI Principles for you to apply in your own life.

Guiding Your Business Through These Times

This virus is having a major impact on our work lives and businesses. While it is impossible to stop this pandemic from harming your business completely, there are many things that you can do to minimize the damage. If you use this situation intelligently, you can even come out at the end of this crisis having evolved in your business beyond what you could have if everything had continued as before.

There is nothing in life that is inherently negative and can’t be transformed into a positive outcome. Many who look at the virus see it as a disastrous worldwide pandemic that destroys our health and our wealth. But what if we look at it another way? What if we see what it can teach us, how it can improve our lives, and possibly even aid our business in becoming more profitable than ever?

People still need services, help, and guidance – and in fact, these things are needed now more than ever. Even though many people are taking a step back from their daily lives, the world must continue moving forward. We have the financial economy and the health economy and clearly at this time the health economy needs to overtake and take precedent over the financial economy. However, you still need to keep your businesses viable and running. You still need to keep paying your rent or your mortgage and your bills to take care of your family.

While the world is collectively retreating to their homes to ride out this storm, this is the perfect time for you to creatively utilize your talents and your skills to reinvent, remodify, and repurpose how you communicate and how you provide your services to your customers.

This may take the form of offering some new menu of services that may take some new pricing models, it may take reaching out to your customers and finding out what it is they want now and what they don’t want. In this time where many are being careful with their spending, you can find out what they’re willing to pay for what they’re not willing to pay for.

One important thing is to make sure that you are taking all the prudent things that can be done to protect your employees. This may mean that they work from home and take appropriate sick time or paid vacation. You may need to figure out what compensation plans you have for people who are going to be affected by this.

This pandemic can be a good opportunity to modify your business model during the coronavirus and perhaps increase your utilization of the internet and social media. You can connect with your clients and customers through video blogs and messages, emails, blog posts, and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube among others to reach out to those whom you haven’t been reaching out to as authentically and as clearly and consistently as you could have.

At this time, many people are staying home and have a lot of time on their hands, so this is a great time to produce content and get it out to your audience or customers to drive engagement and sales. This is also a wonderful opportunity to share with them how you can be of value and service to them and what your unique selling proposition is that might be of value in this time of need.

This could be a time you decide that paying it forward and giving some of your services out for the greater good in a way that you would not normally do is the right thing to do. You’re being generous and figuring out how to give it to the people who need it the most.

Or maybe, you can look into reducing some of your pricing for a while so that people can utilize these products and services for the benefit of the world economy. You may take a loss right now in your profits, but in the long run, people will remember you as a business who did the right thing and helped out when times were tough.

These are just a few of many suggestions for ways you can meet this challenging situation in your business or work life and successfully navigate through the stormy times we currently find ourselves in. By applying these principles and those we will discuss in Part Two and Three, you will better be able to stay in the eye of the storm where all is calm and clear.

Check out Part 2 here, and Part 3 here!