As I look back to those first few weeks after our landslide, life was pretty chaotic. There were many things outside my life experience that needed to be handled, however, the solutions were not evident. At the time, I can remember wishing someone had written a guidebook, but I couldn’t find it. We were able to do simple things – finding a place to stay, rescuing belongings, finding storage and sourcing kennels and homes for our menagerie. However, we were barely aware of the more long term problems we would need to solve. That is, perhaps, the blessing of shock.

There were so many decisions to make without enough information to evaluate our choices. I would have liked a checklist or a roadmap to help me focus on the next steps that were required to get back on our feet. So, in episode 1006 of Rebuilding Your Life: Moving from Disaster to Prosperity, may I be your guide and provide an image for you to hold as you move through the stages of your individual journey? I’d like to do that.

The image I’ve chosen is the triangle or pyramid we know as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow saw human development as moving from the instinctual to enlightened life. My sense of our experience after a life-altering disaster is that everything we have built up around us collapses, pancaking the levels in one staggering pile of rubble around us. You’ve seen those images in multi-story buildings that fall after an earthquake.

As we begin to rebuild, we must first clear that rubble to provide a level field on which to build anew. We do it instinctively. Those were the activities I could do in the immediate aftermath of the slide. It is the first level of the hierarchy.

Moving up the image of our pyramid of needs, we begin to re-establish or re-create our habits and routines. We will need them to provide structure and a sense of security to the subconscious mind that is charged with our survival. The subconscious may override every desire we summon until we can provide a level of reassurance that everything will be okay and that we will get through this disaster. It will be important to eliminate those habits that no longer serve us, especially those thought habits or paradigms that limit our belief that we can not only survive but thrive in this situation.

The next level on our pyramid is intention. At some point, you will begin to formulate ideas about what you want to make out of the mess in which you find yourself. The recovery work you do at this point becomes a balance point of outer actions and inner work to provide you the focus and sense of direction to accomplish goals. At this stage, you will define what you want, where you are and where you want to be. Very soon, you will be able to lay out a new roadmap, highly customized for you and you alone.

Join me as we reach a turning point in the recovery process. We are standing at the brink of rebuilding where anything is possible, even something better than our previous creations.

The REBUILDING YOUR LIFE: MOVING FROM DISASTER TO PROSPERITY with Susan Sherayko podcast is available on iTunes, as well as Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=62871&refid=stpr. You may subscribe to the RSS feed, leave comments and reviews at those locations. This individual episode is also available at: http://ssherayko.audello.com/rebuildingyourlife1006susansheraykoonmapst1433823264mp3/