The internet is creating transparency in unprecedented ways – and with it, unprecedented change is occurring. Witness the heretofore private lives of celebrities and supposed thought leaders, the furor over the Catholic Church’s handling of priestly misdeeds, the pending audit of the Federal Reserve . . . and on and on.

The old way – the world as we know it of being able to hide secrets – is rapidly coming to a close. In its place is the 24-7 World Wide Web where information is increasingly available about everything and everyone. The founder of Facebook says that privacy is old-fashioned. Each week brings a new scandal.

How is transparency affecting you, your business, the institutions to which you belong? Your political party, religious organization, favorite athletes? How do you feel about the death of privacy? Will it impact you, or is it limited to well-known individuals?

This “end of the world as we know it” is completely predictable given Alvin Tofler’s assertion that the rate of change doubles every ten years. How are you coping with rapid change? Are you able to be resilient and move with it? What parts of rapid change have given you problems?

Okay, gentle readers, this week’s topic has excited some controversy! Note in today’s subject line, I added question marks. Are we in a period of hyper-change where the end of things as we know them actually creates opportunity to create better than ever?

First off, my position: I believe that as a species, we have a fundamental choice – whether or not technology will serve or destroy us. And I’m betting on the “serve” part.

I’m hoping that it’s NOT the world as we know it because, IMHO, that needs to and wants to change. But that’s just me. How do you feel? Do you see the possibility that from the darkest night, we have the ability to pull through and make it?

I am an optimist, someone who never gives up. I will always persevere. You? Does that resonate? How are you when the chips are down? Give up or push through and seize the day? Are your best days ahead?

Probably the best way to address overwhelm is to have a talk with a friendly and supportive person in your life. Ideally, there is no judgment, no criticism and no attitude from that person – just supportive listening and, if you’re lucky, some useful feedback.

It’s amazing what enormous value there is in talking things through. I firmly believe that we humans think better together. Speaking aloud under the right circumstances allows the emotions to usefully come to the surface – and the fears and concerns can be exposed to light and air where, sometimes, some of those worries evaporate.

Explore worst case and best case with that person. Discuss how you can diminish the chances of worst case and expand the chances of best case. Can you think of a recent example of your being supported by discussing something that felt overwhelming, and then someone graciously allowed you to think aloud with them? Were you willing to release some of your overwhelm after that conversation? Who can you talk to in this productive way?

A wonderfully accomplished client and I today discussed a useful strategy for dealing with overwhelm at work.  Do what’s in front of you, and put the the rest on hold for now.

This approach is called compartmentalization in psychological terms: to create a way of thinking that effectively walls off some areas from others. In moderation, this can be a useful strategy.

Here’s how to compartmentalize in a very practical way: Write down the top three things you want to accomplish each day – and then stick to them. At the end of a week, you’ll have accomplished somewhere close to 15 of the most important things.

Fundamental to the approach is to put the other items on hold while you work on your top three priorities. That doesn’t mean to avoid doing the others, but simply to work on what’s in front of you that you have decided is the most important. Working on what’s most important and minimizing the distraction of worry about other things is a process that almost always enhances productivity and reduces overwhelm.

Give this strategy a try for a few days. It’s not perfect, but it definitely helps.

Sometimes, we humans are able to transcend worry, yet we don’t quite know how or why. Much of the time, it’s because we’re able to create a positive vision of the future to live into rather than “fearing into the future.”

Sri Chinmoy wrote: “Transcendence is a never-ending climbing process, a dynamic reality.”

To “climb” out of worry requires forward vision and a realization that, as Chinmoy says, we are engaged in a never-ending, ever-changing process. Worry is often based on a belief – and a mostly vain hope – that if we handle what we’re currently worried about, we’ll somehow reach a state of no-worry and everything will finally be okay.

Yet, experience teaches many of us that situations over which we could worry just keep on coming at us. Do you have a practice with which to meet difficulty that indulges very little in worry? If so, how reliable is it and what makes it work for you? If not, what is the likelihood that you have a pattern of worry in the face of life itself that you may want to work on?

“Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.” Oscar Wilde

Is there any other area of life that has produced as much worry and suffering as love? Must love produce suffering, or is the suffering a product of a combination of love with something else . . . like fear of loss and / or regret?

If so – if suffering is unnecessary with pure love – it’s because love is unconditional and to create suffering because of what one “feels” is love is to create needless suffering.

Have you ever worried over love and turned the experience into suffering? How did you transcend it? What role, if any, did fear play in your experience of suffering? Wilde says “love of some kind” plays a role in all suffering. What other kinds of love besides romantic love, if any, have contributed to your suffering in your life?

Worry is irrational, when you think about it, because worry falls into two basic categories: things we can’t do anything about and things that we can.

For the things we can’t do anything about, worry is needless suffering. When we can do something about what worries us, we can take action. Of course, this is a simple approach – but it makes sense. Sometimes, the hardest thing has been to do what makes the most sense.

Worrying is a habit that we most likely were taught by powerful role models in our lives. Like most habits, it can be changed with focus and attention.

What have you been worrying about that you can’t change? Can you give up at least that worrying?

What have you worrying about that you can change? What actions can you take to address those issues?

The world can be a scary place, and there are endless reasons to be concerned. Yet, meeting those concerns with worry generally produces no worthwhile result. Most often, worry causes needless suffering.

Dorothy Thompson said:

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”

Consider that worry is a form of fear. Worry can range in degree from mild to completely debilitating. Fearing the unknown and creating movies in our mind about what can go wrong is a bit like focusing on having an accident while you’re driving: not the smartest, safest or most effective thing to do.

What has been your relationship to worry? Has worry ever truly served you? How do you manage worrisome thoughts when they occur?

The intersection of power and adversity sometimes yields freedom. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote:

“You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.”

This is a surprising paradox: that we humans become free when adversity has taken everything away and we have nothing left to lose.

Life’s difficulties can have this kind of effect. For example, people report bursts of freedom and exuberant power when the adversity of illness has left them with very little time. Similarly, severe financial adversity often results in expanded power to appreciate life and the non-material world. Losing a job can transform into a feeling of liberation.

Have you ever participated in or witnessed the kind of scenario that Solzhenitsyn describes? Can you think of life experiences where all was lost, yet there was freedom and power because adversity had wiped away everything? What is your relationship to this paradox? Is it familiar? How does it resonate with you?

Last night, I had the privilege to participate in an evening called, “How To Cope With Challenging Economic Times,” and I was personally challenged by a woman in the audience who asked a question to the effect of, “After all the cliches, the support of friends and family, the positive self-talk, the resume rewriting and the networking: after all that, my family is still desperate for money because both my ex-husband and I are now out of work. What do we do then?”

Her question cuts to the nub: what happens when there is so much adversity that nothing we do seems to change things and we feel powerless? The most I could do in the moment was to empathize and to focus on our shared human condition. Most likely, everyone past the age of 30 has had some loss from which there is truly no recovery – if we define “recovery” as restoring things to the way that they were.

Yet, the answer that most resonated with me – and the group – was that each day is to be taken one day at a time, and we get through it by loving each other. Cliche? Absolutely. True? You tell me. What else is there when all is said and done?

When adversity is so huge that nothing seems to work, do you: (a) withdraw to yourself (b) allow and invite others to support you emotionally (c) feel ashamed and try to work your way out of the situation by being tough, or (d) love yourself and allow others to love you through it? There is no right answer for everyone.

What do we do when prolonged adversity seems to be permanent? How are we able to access our power?