Woosh! Wham! That’s the sound of the rug that was just pulled from underneath your feet and the crash that follows. Your plans are now up in the air and who knows what the future looks like, or when things will go back to normal..? A coronavirus pandemic has stopped the world, but can this pandemic lead to something good? Can it lead to you becoming a more daring version of yourself?
We live our lives every day, making plans for this afternoon, tomorrow, next week/month/year, thinking of what we’ll do next. We spend a lot of time planning where we’ll go, who with and what we’ll do when we get there.
And that worked fine… Until a few weeks ago… This pandemic has been brewing for a few months, but it was difficult, if not impossible to imagine the impact it would have all over the world and on our own lives. Suddenly, all our plans are out of the window. We’re at home, we’re confined and restricted in what we do, our freedoms curbed with no idea when or how things will change again.
Everything feels a little uncertain. We don’t know how long this will last, and we don’t know what the long-lasting impacts are going to be. We can only guess right now. It is this uncertainty that means we struggle to do our normal planning, that is stopping us looking ahead like we would normally do.
It is high-lighting something important however. We plot, plan and scheme for what we’ll do in the future and we expect that is what will happen. Sure we allow for some changes to occur, for some unexpected things that will cause us to change our plans, but we plan for those and we feel like we’re in control.
The current uncertainty is highlighting that our normal sense of ‘being in control’ is nothing but an illusion we create for ourselves; an illusion in which we feel safe and capable, in which we can perform well and progress in whatever we are doing.
This sense of ‘being in control’ keeps a whole host of fears at bay, it keeps uncertainty out, as uncertainty and fear can be almost paralysing; it can stop us taking action, moving forward and performing at our best.
So what is this current situation showing us?
Are you sitting still, paralysed by fear? No! I bet you’re trying to carry on as normal as possible. I bet you’re getting your groceries, spending time with your family and connecting with friends and family online.
If you’re an entrepreneur, I’m sure you’re strategising. Maybe you’re pivoting your business to adapt to this new environment, or maybe you’re looking at how you can be more visible or serve a different market in a different way. You may even have found new revenue streams and a new way to grow your business in ways you hadn’t ever considered before.
If you’re a professional, I bet you’re rising to the challenge to carry on your projects in a more limited working environment. I bet you’re communicating with your colleagues differently and you’re learning a new way of collaborating, using new tools which might feel pretty good actually.
If you’re at home with your family, I bet you’re getting really creative with things to do, keeping everyone entertained as well as keeping the household going. You’re probably using new ways of keeping in touch with family and getting to know your neighbours in a different way.
In any case, whoever you are and whatever you are doing, you are probably stretching yourself. You might not even recognise it, but you are. You’ve learnt new things since this has started, you’ve started doing things differently, you’ve flexed, stretched, adjusted and adapted.
You can do more than what you thought you could before. You’ve been forced to look at things differently. And actually, you’re doing great.
That false sense of being in control, which normally keeps us moving forward, is also shown as keeping us in our place, at risk of being static. It creates our comfort zone from which we rarely stray.
In this pandemic world, we’re proving to ourselves that we are capable of more, we are overcoming fears, we are pushing our boundaries and we are growing because of it. We’re all becoming more daring versions of ourselves.
You are a more daring you! Give yourself the credit that deserves. And make a conscious choice for yourself, that you will take this more daring you forward into the post-pandemic world.
