When crisis hits at work, reach for your purple crayon 🖍️💜
Are you in crisis right now? If not, have you ever experienced one and can you remember it?
In the book Harold and the Purple Crayon*, a boy escapes catastrophe thanks to a magic crayon.
In the grip of calamity, do you wish you too had a purple crayon and could draw yourself out of it?
Like Harold who draws a boat when the ocean swells; or a balloon when he falls off a mountain?
You don’t need to wish for a purple crayon. You have one. You just forgot which pocket it’s in.
Harold’s purple crayon is not really about drawing.
It is about internal sovereignty, the ability to remain steady and choose how to face adversity.
Your purple crayon is that sovereignty.
While in investment banking, I burnt out twice. I recall the inner slippage; I was coming undone. How did I get through? When my body seized, I tilted my head back: soothing air rushed in. I repeated the Stoic values like a mantra. Stress. Breath. Values. Return to myself. Repeat.
When crisis strikes and your brain goes mush, reach out for your purple crayon:
🪵Hold your crayon’s body: don’t grind your teeth, inhale deeply. Let the breath reach your navel, then let go. Let your routines hold you – that morning coffee or the gym or cooking or sleeping.
⚖️ Press on its tip: let your core values guide you; they are your moral spine. Watch out for your inner critic asking for external validation. And my favourite: remember you can say ‘no’.
🛡️Trace your purple mark: stay consistent even when the storm inside makes you feel like a weathervane. This is when you don’t betray the principles which deeply matter.
You have the stamina to keep colouring and the steadiness to mark cleanly.
When the storm passes, the pigment remains. You were there.
Relationship Wisdom begins within.
One of the first expressions of Relationship Wisdom is the ability to steady yourself in a crisis.
Look at your purple crayon. Can you feel its solid body and its sharp tip? See its uplifting purple?
*cf. the children’s book, Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson (1955)
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📧 alexandra@coachingforinspiration.com
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