Q. This last year has turned my industry on its head. We have to entirely reinvent our business if we want to make money. How do we make the necessary changes with such a short time line?

A. You realize that whoever said, "Necessity is the mother of invention," must have been through a serious crisis. We often don't find out what we are really capable of until adversity forces us to use all our creativity.

During desperate times, it's helpful to understand the paradox our anxiety presents to us. If we can't admit or stand being scared, we will be too frozen to take any risks or think. If we can allow and feel our anxiety, our fear will motivate us to invent new ideas and try out new approaches.

One trick clients tell me is helpful is to concretely describe your worst-case scenario. You know, what happens if you fail miserably and can't reinvent your business.

Would you die of embarrassment, be upset about changing industries, or be worried you would never get another job? Sometimes our fears seem silly when stated out loud. We all tend to be drama kings and queens when it comes to our worries. However, when you state what freaks you out, you can make a plan to cope. When you know you can cope, your fear won't paralyze you.

It also helps to realize there is a reason for the cliche, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." The older we get the more we enjoy the comfort and simplicity of automatic habits. Recent research on the brain shows that the older we get the more we rely on the same pathways in the brain and let other pathways wither.

Crisis makes us give up our cozy habits and demands that we use parts of our brain we normally avoid. The good news is that "old dogs" benefit the most from carving these new brain pathways. Research has proved that as we pass 50, learning is one of the key ways we can slow the aging process.

Even though being forced to think outside our usual box may keep our brain buff, it also makes most of us grumpy. We think, "Why me? Why now? Continued...