10 Life Lessons Learned from Hurricane Ian

We live in Tampa, Florida and we count ourselves lucky to have made it through Ian, the major category 4 hurricane that devastated South West Florida a week ago.

Here are my 10 life lessons learned after going through Ian:

1. Focus on what’s most important: Extreme challenges like a hurricane give us clarity on what is most important. The basic need for safety and protecting lives. Everything else is replaceable. “You can rebuild a house, but you cannot rebuild a lost life and/or a family member”.
2. Have a worst case scenario plan: We had a plan for a worst case scenario to protect ourselves and our family. We called it the safe Do we have a safe room in our lives to go to when things get tough or challenging?
3. Have a Plan B: Even though we had a safe room, we also had a backup plan in case things got worse. The stress centered around when to activate plan B before it was too late, and data and weather tools and apps were very helpful in making that Do we have tools and metrics to use in our businesses and lives to trigger plan B and C before it is too late?
4. No time for an Ego: A hurricane time is not time for personal “I can beat this”! Historical success is not a guarantee for the future. Terrains and conditions change. This is time to be humble. Do we sometime let our ego drive our decisions and/or get in our way?
5. Care for others – Be others-centered. It was remarkable how friends and neighbors reached out to each other. Humans do care for each other in difficult times. Adversities unite people. Are we self-centered or are we others-centered?
6. Keep calm: My wife and I had to stay calm for our kids and for each other. We have been through challenging times before so we knew this is the time for leadership and courage. Are we calm when faced with a challenge in front of the team or are we being a Chicken Little: The sky is falling!
7. Trust your gut (God and your spouse!) Fear drives us to look for reassurance from others (evacuate with us!). It would have been easy to give in to peer pressure, but I realized this was the time to trust gut, God and my spouse. As a leader, do we trust our gut or follow the herd?
8. Connect with others: My wife and I took the opportunity to connect with our neighbors that stayed behind and helped board up houses and help calm other nervous people. Do we leverage the power of human connections?
9. When all else fails, pray a lot!!
10. Express appreciation afterward: Having heard from so many people, before, during, and after the storm made me appreciate the care others had expressed toward us. Thank you everyone for your care and support.

These are my lessons from going through an adversity like Hurricane Ian. I do not wish it on others and hope these lessons would come handy when you may need them.