Write your 2021 story

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2020 has arguably been the greatest disruptor of the way human beings live their daily lives since WWII. In fact, people will be writing books making analogies like this for decades to come, just like people wrote books about how humanity was changed forever after the Spanish flu, the World Wars, and after 9/11. I am not a historian and clearly will not be one of those authors, but as a Gestalt trained practitioner, I am deeply interested in systems. While the above events, and the context surrounding the events are very different, what makes the analogy hold up is the scale of the disruption. COVID 19 didn’t just impact you, your immediate household, your work place, or even just your country, it caused a full system disruption. All inhabitants of our planet have been impacted.

Human beings are resilient creatures, and they are also resistant creatures. We are significantly more adept at forming new habits and behaviors than we are at changing or eradicating existing ones. Here’s a simple example you might relate to, your clothes closet. Do you throw away an item of clothing every time you purchase a new one? Maybe, if so, good for you! Most likely, your clothes accumulate over time, and you predominantly wear items you purchased in the last 1-3 years. They are the clothes in the best condition, they fit your body in its current state, and they reflect your current personal and professional identity. You also have clothes in your closet that you have not worn for many years that reflect a past identity, that you bought for a specific event, or fit a body shape you once had. I have a closet full of ‘executive’ clothes that I bought when I became a CEO in 2018. That part of my identity ended unexpectedly in 2020 and I find that I’m not ready to donate them as they represent a recent part of who I was. Most likely, I will purge that section of my wardrobe the next time I move. A move is a large enough disruption to warrant taking a hard look at the clothes I really like, need, and wear. To make significant and lasting change in our lives, we need disruption. While the disruption is occurring, we experience discomfort, pain, and loss. But in it’s aftermath, we know and understand more, and if we act on that knowledge, we are profoundly changed. As Buddhist monk Pema Chodron so acutely said, “Having the rug pulled out from under you is a big opportunity to change your fundamental pattern”.

As we turn into 2021, I think we all understand that that we are participants in a global paradigm shift. I sense, and hear that people want that. We desperately want to look back on 2020 and say ‘If it wasn’t for COVID 19, or the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, or the wildfires in Australia and the western states, as terrible as all that was, we would never have...” Things have to be better moving forward. How do we get there? I don’t know. I’m aware this sounds trite, but how about we start with bite size chunks. Let’s start with you. Change happens one person at a time. It’s the smallest system level there is, the quietest disruptor, but perhaps the most powerful.

Everyone has a 2020 story. But it’s your 2021 story that will matter. Writing that story will take reflection, reclamation and reimagining. You’ll need to make space for it, be intentional, and gather people around you for support, and to hold you accountable. We need to do that for each other if we are going to make positive and lasting changes to the way we live our lives.

I’ve launched a coaching offering specifically designed to assist people in gathering their 2020 experiences, and using what has been learned to inform decision making for 2021 and beyond. Write YOUR 2021 story will kickstart your response to the great disruptor. Through deep listening and powerful questions, I can surface information that brings structure and action to your story. To learn more, click on the link above.

It’s going to take a long time for us to see progress on a full systems level. 2020 has brought into the light the deep rooted inequities of humanity. We can’t wait for others to make the changes for us. Start with you. Start now.

To be more productive - Do nothing

I started a session with a client yesterday with the common opener, “How was your day?” He answered, “Full of meetings, so completely unproductive. I got nothing done.” Yup. I remember that feeling well from my leadership days. I would annually set a new year’s resolution to build space into my work calendar for big picture thinking like vision, strategy, and the development of new impactful new programs. Not to mention time to eat, take a walk, connect with my colleagues, and use the restroom between meetings! I see you nodding, you know what I mean.

After years of being in this cycle, I figured it out. My top tip for productivity? Do less. Or, even better, do nothing.

I am aware this sounds ridiculous.

Adding a 30 minute buffer in between meetings doesn’t seem that difficult, so why don’t we do it? Our answer is always a short laugh followed by an automated response, ‘I just don’t have time.’ Today’s blog is designed to challenge that mindset. Taking a ‘step back’ is critical to our ability to take a step forward. The first step is to quieten the voices that tell you that ‘stepping back’ is a waste of time. (Your voice will be the loudest.) Know that you are doing your colleagues, organization, family, or friend group a disservice if you dismiss ‘doing nothing’ as a waste of time. Secondly, experiment until you find a version of ‘doing nothing’ that works for you. The necessary qualities are few; realistic, repeatable, and restorative. The three r’s! Thirdly, trust that you will notice the benefits of this practice over time and like any practice, you’ll get better at it. Once you personally experience the value of stepping back, it will become an essential function within your work/life flow .

Fundamentally, we understand the idea of a ‘retreat’, a break from the normal way of doing things. This is essentially what a vacation is right? You remove yourself from your regular environment, the cues, people, and behaviors that populate your daily life. The goal of a vacation or retreat is…? You can fill in that gap with your own answer. For me, it’s a sense of adventure, a chance to see things from a new perspective, and to get a change of scenery. The cumulative effect of these benefits is that I feel rejuvenated and inspired.

When you scale the vacation example down to our day-to-day experience, it might look like a walk in the mid-afternoon, a 2-hour weekly calendar block titled, ‘do nothing’, sitting quietly in a softly lit room for 30 minutes a day, the daily 5-minute walk to your favorite spot to pick up coffee. Solo. No scrolling. No phone calls. For once in your life you don’t have to produce results or accomplish anything.

The idea of stepping back or even ‘out’ of doing something to do nothing, has become significantly more challenging for most of us during COVID. For some people, their commute to work, however much they might have complained about it, served as their ‘nothing.’ Gone. I’m hearing from friends and clients that creating structure in the day when every function of their lives, work, sleep, exercise, education, worship, etc., is happening under the same roof. This is becoming a chronic issue, and as working from home is likely to be a norm moving forward, it feels important for us to develop productive habits as soon as possible, habits that include ‘doing nothing’.

So, what does your version of ‘doing nothing’ look like? Mine is rambling, (surprised much?). I do my best thinking and writing when I am walking or running. I also have some productive conversations (with myself), and find I rant very persuasively when running!  I’ll come home, turn on my computer and the creative content is ready to flow.

Your ‘doing nothing’ doesn’t have to be perceptible to anyone else other than yourself. It doesn’t have to be seated meditation, crocheting, or rambling for that matter. You just need to create conditions that promote generative thinking; solidarity, the absence of technological distractions, and if possible, a change of location is helpful. These conditions might create enough space in your crowded crania for new thoughts, solutions, and for inspiration to surface.

I was recently gifted a beautifully illustrated book (pictured below) by a Zen Buddhist teacher and writer, Haemin Sunim, called, ‘The Things you can see only when you slow down.’ I think the gift giver (an employee) was trying to tell me something! He writes:

Do you have something on your mind?
Then take a walk in the sun.
Under the warmth of the sun,
your brain will release serotonin, which calms
the mind.
If you let your mind linger on the question
without trying too hard to find the solution,
an answer will emerge on its own

And if that wasn’t inspirational enough, I had to have my favorite poet, Mary Oliver weigh in. In her work, I consistently hear her encouraging us to step back and out; it’s at the heart of her creative existence. I’ll leave you with this poem, and a reminder of the question of the day,

“What does your version of ‘doing nothing’ look like?”

Today

 Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

Exhaling 2020

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In 29 days, it will be 2021. Insert your own exclamation here. Feel free to shout it out, no-one will hear you. Throw in an expletive or two if it helps. Or perhaps you just need to exhale for the next 29 days. This year more than ever, it’s feels important to mark the turn of the year in an intentional and meaningful way.

I was listening to behavioral economist and Harvard Business School faculty member Michael Norton talk before the thanksgiving holiday about the significance of engaging in rituals. In 2020, many of our normal rituals have been disrupted; weddings, funerals, holiday traditions, graduations, vacations, end of year staff potlucks, and the list goes on.  Jordan stressed that rituals restore our sense of control, and remind us that we can, and will get through this. They calm and regulate us while creating and strengthening bonds. In a year with so much actual and ambiguous loss, our inability to perform and participate in these rituals has compounded a profound sense of sadness and detachment.

In reality, January 1st is just another day, one out of 365. At some point, humans made the decision to attribute significance to that day, and for good reason. For me, it’s something to do with clearing the ground; discarding residue that I don’t want to carry over. This reflective self-inventory helps to set the stage for what I want to achieve personally and professionally in the new year.  

William Bridges, author of Transitions states that ‘Every new beginning starts with an ending’. In other words, ritualizing, celebrating, and marking endings are a pre-requisite for successful beginnings. You might remember from an earlier blog that part of building resiliency is our ability to be adaptable, and to give us credit, we’ve done a pretty admirable job of reinventing our usual rituals to make the best of a crappy situation. The lesson here is, don’t let the lack of your usual way of doing things stop you from doing anything at all. I am sure the ball will drop in an empty Times Square.

A special shout out to leaders and managers who have supported teams during a period of crisis, (and remotely!). If an end of year collective ritual would be beneficial for your team, I have created a coaching offering called E.X.H.A.L.E. designed to reflect on people’s individual and shared experience during a challenging 2020, and to use those experiences to strengthen and energize the team for 2021. The framework of this offering would be helpful for individuals and non-work groups too, so check it out.

Poet T.S. Elliot said, ‘The end is where we start from’. So, how are you going to mark the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021? Think about it. Talk with your family, friends and colleagues.

Reflect. Acknowledge. Honor. Celebrate. Clear the Ground. Exhale.

“This is just a beginning”

When the results of the 2020 election came out on Saturday, Michelle Obama’s message was clear. In her usual wise and compassionate way, she said via social media:

“After we celebrate – and we should all take a moment to exhale after everything we’ve been through – let’s remember that this is just a beginning. It’s a first step.”

For me, this message would have been less powerful, and I would go as far as to say less accurate, if she had said “This is just the beginning.” The use of the word ‘the’ might signal a false sense of having ‘arrived’. While this might have temporarily increased our confidence (and reduced a significant build-up of anxiety!) it would ultimately have promoted a false sense of security. The subtle difference between the determiners ‘a’ and ‘the’ makes a lot of difference when it comes to our seemingly endless struggle to accept that the ground shifts beneath us constantly.

As I have mentioned in past blogs, my work as a coach and consultant is centered around the work of organizational consultant William Bridges. In his landmark book ‘Transitions’, he reframes our long-held simplistic notion that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. I use the word ‘reframe’ because he is in fact a huge proponent of this tri-structure. However, he does not believe that they happen in that order, or that they are even sequential. In fact, he stresses that they often happen simultaneously, they always overlap, they repeat, and loop, and cycle and… well, you get the idea. Only the last 18 pages of his 185-page book are dedicated to ‘new beginnings’. “We forget how indirect and unimpressive new beginnings are”, he says.  The other 157 pages focus on the significance of ‘endings’ and most importantly, the work that lies in the space between what was, and what will be. It’s in the middle, (he calls this the ‘neutral zone’) where real transformation happens.

Even though the external new beginning may happen very quickly… the internal re-identification and re-engagement always occur more slowly.

When the first black man was elected President of the United States at the end of 2007, we celebrated hard and for good reason. We partied, marched, wept, sang, wrote poetry and created art. We fiercely believed and hoped. Surely this was a ‘new beginning’? Undoubtedly, this was a long overdue leap for this country. Many black people thought that they would never live to see the day. This was progress. Things will be different now. Right?
But, at the end of 2015…

When Michelle Obama said “It’s just a beginning” instead of ‘It’s just the beginning,’ she is reminding us that the work is ongoing, and always ahead of us.

Voting in one election isn’t a magic wand, and neither is winning one. Let us remember the millions of people who voted for the status quo… We’ve got a lot of work to do to reach out to those folks and connect with them… The path to progress will always be uphill.

Here’s Bridges again:

Genuine beginnings depend on an inner realignment rather than on external shifts, for it is only when we are aligned with deep longings that we become powerful motivated.

In westernized culture, we remain more comfortable with bright lines, fixed timelines, and clear structure. We like strong signals that an ending is final, and that after a new beginning, there is no need to look back. Eastern philosophers are thankfully relentless in their efforts to soften these behaviors, encouraging us to embrace uncertainty and find comfort within chaos. We are slow learners, aren’t we? The pathway to new beginnings is paved with more than sheer perseverance. It’s paved with beginnings and first steps. Thank you Michelle, for your words of wisdom. You join company with so many wise women teachers who continue to inspire me every day. I’ll close this week’s ramble with the words of another, Buddhist monk, Pema Chödrön:

What does it take to use the life we already have in order to make us wiser rather than more stuck…The answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path. Everything naturally has a ground, a path, and fruition. This is like saying that everything has a beginning, middle, and end. But it is also said that the path itself is both the ground and the fruition. The path is the goal.

Unpack your saturation point

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Last week I heard the phrase ‘concurrent pandemics’ for the first time. Wow. Yes.

Clients have recently been sharing that they are experiencing a build-up of pressure; saying things like, ‘I just can’t take one more thing thrown at me,’ and ‘I am beyond maxed out.’ My favorite was ‘The s**t is hitting the fan from too many directions.’ One client expressed that they felt like a ‘sponge that cannot take on any more water’. He was saturated. For him, that felt like numbness. For others, panic.

At this point, 8 months into COVID (the umbrella pandemic), we are feeling the cumulative impact of multiple and concurrent underlying stressors: parenting anxious children, increased pressure at work, being out of work during an economic downturn, serious concerns around short and long term financial stability, staying safe and healthy, the impending election, lack of socialization, and the list goes on. And on.  

As it looks like we might be here for a while, it seems necessary to figure out a way to ‘wring out your own sponge’ when you reach a saturation point. I went through the following exercise to wring out my own sponge. Perhaps try it for yourself.

• Imagine COVID is a large river that dams, and the related (or unrelated) stressors as tributaries flowing into that river

• Make a list of your tributaries

• Acknowledge that each of these tributaries by themselves would be stressful enough

• Realize that individually, the tributaries have their own cycles, energy, flow, and specific challenges

• Notice that you respond to, and cope with each of these tributaries differently. Not all the tributaries are the same length. Some are deeper than others. Some flow quickly, some flow so slowly they appear stagnant

• Chart the highs and lows for each of these tributaries over the last 8 months. (See visual below). Notice that the tributaries peak at different times

• Observe that sometimes, one or more peaks occur concurrently. They flow into the river and dam breaks. You’ve reached a saturation point

Here’s why this exercise was helpful for me. When I feel the pressure reaching saturation point, I remind myself that I’m experiencing the cumulative impact of multiple stressors. I look at my list and figure out what’s peaking and focus on accessing the coping mechanisms for that particular stressor. If it’s two, or god help me, three concurrent stressors, I step back, or away. When I’m ready (which might not be until the next day), I prioritize, and tackle the individual challenges in bite size chunks, Releasing the dam one tributary at a time.

Ok. I feel like my ramble is rambling, and my analogy is getting unwieldy! Take what resonates with you and explore. If you try the exercise yourself, I’d love to hear what was useful and what you learned. If you want some support unpacking your saturation point, please reach out to me, or a loved one.

One. Stressor. At. A. Time. Please.

The Professional Pivot - Buckle up!

My career, as I had known it for the first half of my working life, came to an unexpected end in January of 2020, when the organization I worked for sadly closed. Even though I knew I was going to have to reinvent myself professionally before COVID hit, I am now one of tens of millions of Americans who find themselves in a professional pivot. In addition to being anxious about my future financial health, I also found myself grieving and afraid. It was scary not to have an answer to the question ‘So what do you do?’ As much as we might protest that our job is not ‘who we are’, when that job is lost, it seriously and painfully calls our identity into question.

To be truly in (career) transition means two things: First, it means accepting the loss of identity, influence, power, position, income, routine and sense of worth that comes with having your work life as you have known it end. It also means allowing yourself to feel the feelings associated with that loss. Second, it means recognizing at the same time that stepping forward boldly into the messy process of transition is a prelude to taking charge of your professional life so that you can become more of who you want to be. (Beverly Ryle)

It’s been 8 months since I had a ‘job’. I am still struggling with answering the question, ‘What do you do?’ On a low day, I might answer, ‘I’m out of work right now.’ On a good day, I am excited to say, ‘I am a coach and consultant specializing in supporting people and organizations who are in transition.’

To help me navigate this inflection point in my working life, I took a few actionable steps:

• I reconnected with a former coach and mentor . I started working with him a couple of months prior to my job ending; it was obviously a stressful time for those I worked with, and a stressful time for me personally. We met every Friday for the better part of 10 months. The stability of our work together helped me to manage a roller coaster of emotions and experiences.

• I re-read a book I would recommend to anyone who finds themselves in a professional reset or pivot; Ground of your own Choosing, by Beverly Ryle. I found her words of deep comfort and inspiration. Ryle’s book is a process-based, and at times methodical approach to figuring out your next professional chapter. It’s not about listing your skills, past-experience, attributes, and training, it’s the harder, and more rewarding process of discovering your authentic self and your core values, so that you are in a position to choose or create opportunities that align with those values.

• I also re-read William Bridges’ Transitions for the fourth time. His belief that ‘every new beginning starts with an ending,’ was invaluable to me in letting go of elements of my professional identity that were no longer true, or serving me. He acknowledges the messiness of the pivot process and in fact, recommends it. He warned me not to rush, hit rewind or fast-forward. It’s going to take as long as it takes. Bridges also wrote a book specifically about work transitions Creating you & Co which opens by providing some context around the current work climate. Most helpful to me was his suggestion to stop thinking about finding a ‘job’ and to start thinking about creating ‘work.’ This book is particularly helpful if you are considering launching your own business.

• I finally got around to reading What color is your parachute by Richard N. Bolles. The star of this work-seeker classic, for me at least, is the prioritization grid. This tool really forces you to surface your preferences in a revealing way. For example, I’d prefer flexibility about when I work, over flexibility as to where I work. Also, when prioritizing my preferable working conditions, it turns out that I’d rather share an office that was clean, than have my own dirty office. As someone who really enjoys solitude, this surprised me!

• I need to manage disappointment. Regularly.

• I need to be kind to myself. Period.

It’s taken a lot of letting go, soul searching, and daring greatly (thanks Brene Brown) for ‘what I want’ to start coming into focus. An amazing friend and mentor who is also self-employed reminded me recently, “Girlfriend, you’re just at the beginning.’ That was hard to hear, but true, and ultimately helpful.

I’ve come a long way in the 8 months in figuring out what I want, and who I want to be professionally. Peter Drucker, the management consultant titan, said in his direct and simple way, “If you don’t know what you want, it’s not surprising you aren’t getting it.” Ouch. Again, hard to hear, but true.

Buckle up. Be kind to yourself. Consider a coach. It’s worth the ride.

A change is more than just a rest

First off, I need to make a correction from the video above. I misquoted Charles Duhigg when I said that 99% of everything we do is a habit. The actual percentage, based on a 2006 Duke University study, is 40%. This is still an extraordinary amount of our daily actions I think! Duhigg’s book, ‘The Power of Habit’, explores how we form and change behaviors. As a transitions specialist, this seemed like a book I should read. His exploration of how to change habits intersects with William Bridges’ work around making sense of life’s changes, a grounding methodology for my work as a coach and consultant. Here’s Duhigg:

Habits are not destiny, they can be ignored, changed or replaced. But the reason the discovery of the habit loop (cue, routine, reward) is so important is because it reveals a basic truth. When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit – unless you find a new routine – the pattern will unfold automatically.

During COVID, we have quickly developed new routines that allow us to do our jobs at home, get groceries without leaving the house, educate our children without sending them to school, and the list goes on. I’ve talked a lot in previous posts about how COVID is an opportunity to leverage; an unexpected window of time to take a hard look at our lives, and perhaps make changes we would not have considered pre-COVID. There is this internal struggle between battening down the hatches (reinforcing well-established routines, and securing new ones) to make us feel safe, and the desire to make courageous decisions about what we need and want that could fundamentally alter the direction of our lives. Bridges and Duhigg suggest that in order to break up the cue systems that reinforce our current roles and behaviors, we need to remove ourselves from the familiar. It’s the same concept as meditation, or participating in a retreat. Here’s Bridges:

Christ makes a 40 day journey, young initiates are removed from the family and taken to the forest, Oedipus leaves home to avoid a fate that, as it turns out, he meets along the way. We no longer have oracles or visions, no-one rings a bell one morning and says ‘your time has come.’ But all the same, we do find ourselves periodically being disengaged either willingly or unwillingly from activities, the relationships, the settings, and the roles that have been important to us. What if these losses are symbolic that a time of personal transition is beginning?

Duhigg’s work on ‘habits’ focuses on change on the micro level, while Bridges’ work on ‘transitions’ is more macro, but the premise of the conditions under which the change can occur is the same; remove yourself from the familiar. Considering the restrictions put on our lives due to COVID, how can we change something as small as a habit, or as significant as say, a career change? My suggestion is to start small. Just get a change of scenery.

Drive to a random town you’ve always wanted visit and pick up a coffee.
Walk around the streets with no real agenda.
If possible, do it in solitude.
No earbuds.
Mute the phone.
Breathe.
Listen.
A change is much more than just a rest.

Resilience as a skill

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"Resilience isn't a single skill. It's a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive." (Jean Chatsky)

Chatzky draws our attention to the multiple applications of one of my favorite words, resiliency. This year has kindly provided us with inexhaustible opportunities to develop our resiliency. Thank you 2020! We are facing relentless simultaneous challenges and being tested daily. Unfortunately, I don’t see much sign of it letting up. Many of the challenges that have surfaced this year;  an increase in violence and prejudice against people of color, COVID, wildfires, and a deeply troubling political landscape, are symptoms of chronic issues that will be the hallmarks of the first half of the 21st century. So, settle in, we are going to be here for a while. Resilience needs to be one of everyone’s favorite words!

I specifically wanted to focus on resilience as a skill, a behavior, a practice, rather than the idea of resilience as a trait. We all have some level of resilience, but it’s not a static attribute. Unconsciously, resilience looks like the slow build up of tolerance, like a callus, that comes from living through life’s painful chapters. Consciously, resilience is an active response; choices we can make albeit under duress and with great effort, to manage difficult periods.

“No matter how bleak or menacing a situation may appear, it does not entirely own us. It can't take away our freedom to respond, our power to take action.”  (Ryder Carroll)

Unless we recognize and pay attention to our resilient behaviors, we can’t practice them. We can, and should, intentionally develop resilience. What are three new resilient behaviors you have noticed or developed in 2020? For me, they are flexibility, creativity, and enthusiasm.

Flexibility – Despite 17 years of yoga, I remain tight as a board, on and off my mat! I like to be in control, and therefore work really hard, physically and mentally, to improve my flexibility. In relation to resilience, I see flexibility as our ability to be responsive, adaptable, to think on our feet, and get comfortable with working around obstacles. Human beings and our institutions, LOVE to do things the way we have always done them. COVID has required us to do things differently. If we can’t celebrate a loved one’s birthday in person, how are we going to do it? If we can’t sing with the church choir, how are we going to make music together? How many times have you said in the last 8 months, ‘It’s not as good as in person, but it’s better than nothing!’ That’s flexibility.  

Creativity – I have welcomed the breaks in the incessant news to hear the light-hearted stories about people baking sourdough, brewing beer, quilting, and planting vegetable gardens. These pastimes are not just escapism, they are necessary creative outlets for expression and a form of coping. When we bust out the KitchenAid or garden rake, we are practicing resilience. This skill is related to the last one; in order to be flexible, we get creative.

Enthusiasm – When experiencing so many externally imposed restrictions on our normal way of doing things, we can find ourselves working really hard to find cracks for the light to shine through. When I catch even the smallest glimmer of light, I have a disproportionate amount of enthusiasm for it! My creative outlet this year has been to experiment with baking. I love to cook but until this year, I had never owned a muffin pan. The sense of achievement, bordering on delirium I felt when turning out an edible quiche crust and delicious corn muffins, far exceeded the norm. I savored the moment. Literally.

Angela Duckworth, psychologist and author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance wrote, “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”
I read here that she sees enthusiasm as a pre-requisite for endurance. By behaving and responding enthusiastically, we build endurance. By building endurance, we become more resilient.

I hope you will take a little time to reflect on newly acquired resilient skills. I’d love to hear from you with what you’ve noticed and learned. I’ll end how I started, with Chatsky’s quote, “To bounce back from bumps in the road… you should focus on emphasizing the positive.”

So, what are you enthusiastic about?

We’re all in transition

I think I speak for all 7.8 billion people on the planet when I share that at least once a day I fantasize about midnight on December 31st, 2020. I am not sure if I believe in the concept of 'a reckoning', but it sure feels like that's what's happening. There's this feeling of absolute saturation as we continue to manage multiple life changing challenges, simultaneously. Enough already. 

AND... I wouldn't presume I speak for everyone on the planet when I share that I find myself constantly needing to make meaning out of 2020. If we are going to go through all this, can we please, please, make it matter. Is it possible to come out of this terrible time a little more... (complete this sentence with whatever is top of your list today)?   

2020 has upset a long-standing arrangement. Humanity is in major transition. Lockdown has pressed pause, and forced us to take a step, no, a leap, back from our normal way of doing things. The result is undoubtedly chaotic, but there's also an accompanying emptiness, a collective inhale, while we wonder, and wait to see how life is going to look on the 'other side'. This much I know, 2020 is one for the history books. For the next 50 years shelves will be full of books examining the way in which COVID 19 permanently changed how human beings live and work. The big question is, will we have learned anything? Will things be better on the 'other side' because of it? 

In a recent poll conducted by OnePoll, 55% of 2000 respondents looked back on their values pre-quarantine with some 'embarrassment', and 70% of those polled expressed that life post-lockdown will look very different as a result of what they've learned and experienced; more time with friends and family, better work/life balance etc. I did my own poll in mid-June asking people to summarize how they were feeling in just one word. While I received back plenty of 'lost', 'anxious', and 'overwhelmed', I was also interested to see the word 'grateful' repeatedly. In follow-up conversations, people expressed gratitude for things that in 2019 they took for granted; health, having food on the table, a home, employment etc. When digging a little deeper though, what surfaced was gratitude for the fact that COVID, as terrible as it is, has forced people into reevaluating well, pretty much everything. By pulling us away from all that is familiar, and locking us up with ourselves, COVID holds up a mirror, forcing deep reflection into well-established behaviors and ways of moving in the world. Would we ever have done this kind of soul searching without an external intervention the size of a global pandemic?

As a coach and consultant I have been heavily influenced by the work of William Bridges, whose book, 'Transitions, Making Sense of Life's Changes' published its 40th anniversary edition in December of 2019. I find this insight helpful:

'One of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for the gaps in the continuity of existence. For us, emptiness represents only the absence of something. So when what's missing is as important as relatedness and purpose and reality, we try to find ways of replacing these missing elements as quickly as possible... we hope it can only be a temporary, if unfortunate situation to be endured.' 

Earlier this month, I launched a flexible 8-week coaching offering for individuals, teams or organizations, ‘Write your 2021 Story'.  Using Bridges 'Transitions' model, I am working with clients to make meaning out of 2020, to recognize what chapters are ending, to stay curious about the 'emptiness', and to possibly make choices that will lead to increased happiness and fulfillment. Based on everything you have learned so far in 2020, what do you want your life to look like in 2021? If this sounds like a potentially helpful mindset shift for you, please read more about this coaching offering by clicking on the link above, or simply contact me to schedule a time to talk.

Bridges goes on to say, "Divorces, deaths, job changes, moves... disengage us from the contexts in which we have known ourselves. They break up the old cue system that served to reinforce our behavior... As long as a system is working, it is very difficult for a member of it to imagine an alternative way of life and an alternate reality. But, with disengagement, an inexorable process of change begins."

I imagine Bridges, who passed away in 2013, would be busy right now penning the 41st anniversary edition to help us make sense of 2020. Add to cart and next day delivery please. 

My new blog- Weekly Rambles

Mid run, Blue Hills Reservation - MA. May 2020

I’m not a religious person, but I’m definitely spiritual. Trees are my church. I grew up in rural England and spent most of my free time running around the hills and woods of Somerset. I feel completely different when I am around them and within them. Yes, there is a sense of deep contentment, but also pure physical and mental elation. Trees humble me with their relentless resilience, and the enduring and vital role they play in the ecosystem. I feel like I am part of something bigger when I am in their presence. I’ve felt this way as long as I can remember.

As a coach, search consultant and interim leader, I work with individuals and organizations to not just manage, but embrace transition. At the heart of this work is helping people to realize and accept what is coming to an end, and to see the opportunity in the space between what was and what could be. When I was looking for something to ground my working philosophy, trees loomed strong and large. Rumi tells us to “Be like a tree. Stay grounded, keep growing, and know when to let go.” This mantra is invaluable for people or places in transition. We don’t grow, unless we let go (that’s rhymes if you read it out loud).

So, beginning next week, I hope you will come on a weekly walk in the trees with me. We can ramble while rambling.