How To Listen

Crisis as Opportunity

Given our tough economic times recently there has been a lot of talk about crisis’s on the news. President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, even said, “We don’t want to let a crisis go to waste.” implying that a crisis is an opportunity to do something. This reminded me of a conversation I had with Joel Diegert when we were in the waning days of college.

We were discussing performance techniques. You know, like everyone does. Right? Joel said his strategy for recovering from inevitable mistakes in a life performance is to realize that the moment he makes a mistake he had a opportunity to do something awesome. It was the one moment he was sure to have the audience’s attention, and he wasn’t going to waste it.

This idea has stuck with me to this day. It really helps me stay in a positive frame of mind when performing.