What do you do in the first five minutes when everything falls apart?

The four moves

I learned the first question at a pond. I stood on a hiking path and could not go on, because water was in front of me. Then people came by and asked whether the path continued back there. I answered that there was a pond, take off your shoes and walk through. That advice had never occurred to me for myself. For other people I keep thinking. The question switches that part back on.

Problems are called problems because they are there for you, otherwise they would be called counter plans.

The second question sounds like a fridge magnet and is still the most useful. It forces me, in a situation I did not want, to look for the part I keep. Back then I say the hardest situations become the most valuable in hindsight. Today I put that more carefully. Some simply stay bad. It still works, because it moves the head from circling to sorting.

• Ask what you would advise someone in exactly your situation. It gets stronger when you picture someone you love.
• Ask what you take from this situation that you can use. It turns the trouble into material.
• Hold on to a sentence you trust. Mine has been the same since school.
• Move before you decide. Get out, walk, jump, breathe.

The focus you choose

Three months earlier, in August 2016, I ran the same toolkit on a bigger case. On the last day of a four month trip my laptop and my phone were stolen. In the video I say I hope whoever took them makes something good out of it. That is a choice about what I look at, and it decides my next hour.

Three questions from that video are still with me. What is interesting about this situation. What would I have to believe to feel the way I feel now. How will I look at this in ten years. The second one is the most uncomfortable, because it uncovers a belief I would never sign in daylight. All three reach into the picture I make of the situation, and sharpening it is the work I call world-modeling.

It works for a reason I describe back then. The brain answers every question, even when it has none, and then invents one. That is konfabulation, and it runs both ways. Whoever asks why they can never concentrate gets an answer, and afterwards it sounds like a character trait. Why your own inner life is so hard to read stands in Why is looking inward not enough to know yourself?

The sentence I hold on to

The third step needs something you trust when nothing else carries you. For me it is a sentence from school, from years that were hard, long before any camera.

This too will pass.

The sentence claims nothing about the outcome. It says the state ends, and that is enough for five minutes. In the video I repeat it four times and say why. Repetition is the part still there when the situation comes back.

Three levels of fear

Three days later I followed up in English with a split I have used ever since. Logical fear has a reason you can write down. A backup plan handles it: name the worst case and improve it until you can live with it. The mistake comes afterwards, when people live inside their backup plan instead of leaving it where it belongs.

The back-up plan isn't there to be lived, a back-up plan is there to catch you.

Emotional fear has no reason you can write down and still moves when you change three things: your posture, your own questions and your words for the situation. The third level I call the soul level. It reports in even when the logical and the emotional side are settled, and it needs time and being alone. I went into the forest for four days for it.

What I do differently today

Two things. Back then it sounds as if focus were the whole story, as if any feeling could be switched like a light. Today I let a feeling finish first, because it carries information I would otherwise skip. What a feeling is trying to say stands in What is a feeling trying to say?

And I now keep the five minutes apart from the rest. They are about the state. After that the work on the problem begins, and something else applies there: look at what actually went wrong, even when your own share was large. How I handle objections instead of pushing them away stands in When is criticism a gift and when is it just fear? The sentence I hold on to carries the day. The North Star carries the years, which is what the speech about values and joy is for.

Why movement is the fourth step shows up in one passage. I was so stressed that I suddenly stood in the middle of a building site without knowing how I got there. Whoever decides in that state is only reacting.

Sources and links

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2026-09-03: Planted from three videos of 2016.