The world came to a complete stop when around the globe, country after country were announcing an Emergency shut down due to the Coronavirus. This was back in March 2020 and it is now September and while things have reopened in many parts of the world, such as in Canada where I’m from, but things are still far away from going back to the Normal life we had pre-Covid. But What is normal really? The only thing life guarantees for us is that it is always changing and adapting to changes or being resilient have become a very handful skill that seems to differentiate between those who will get out of all this with less mental bruises vs those who will feel like their life was set a few steps back.
While everyone has their own way to deal with trauma, challenges such as this world-wide phenomenon, for myself, the following 5 tips are what have helped me to utilize this pandemic to launch myself forward:
1) Learn something new
a. With my whole social calendar being wiped out, I now find myself with a lot more time on my hand, well technically I’m stuck at home with 2 young kids so “more time” is debatable but in general I find without the crazy social calendar, I am able to sneak in a couple of hours a week and so since Covid-19 I’ve signed up for a couple of online courses and challenges to help me learn something new. For me I’ve started to brush up on my marketing skills by taking a few new courses in that arena.
2) Pick a few good habits to start or re-established
a. I used to love reading and writing but pre-Covid I was not able to find the time to do so but for the past 7 months, I’ve been listening to many audiotapes and started to make it a habit to write weekly.
3) Finish a project that’s been delayed
a. I’ve been meaning to start my new website and just never got around to doing it until Covid hit and finally I’m setting up sometime to get my website launched. The fact that you’re able to read this is because I’ve made it a point to launch something I’ve been delaying on.
b. For some of you, that project might even be some decluttering, home cleaning, renovations, whatever it was you’ve been meaning to do but putting on the back burner.
4) Spend some time re-evaluating your business and personal goals
a. Often we don’t get the time to just sit for hours and hours with just our own thoughts. The nature of being an serial entrepreneur often means we are juggling between a million things. Prior to Covid-19 whenever I feel too overwhelmed from all the go go go, I often go on a Mindfulness Retreat where I’m forced to stop and just Be…and what a difference that makes. We often have great intention of stopping but then Life gets in the way, so when we are forced to come to a stop, why not use these valuable time to re-evaluate where we were heading prior to Covid and if that’s the destination we want to end at…perhaps we will see some new lights and start to take the action we want to head towards another path.
5) Spend some time creating memories with your children or loved ones
a. This is my favorite one. After 40 years of Life, what I came to realized is that Everything, literally everything can be taken away from us within a second, our health, our loved ones, money, material possessions. Since most things are not guaranteed to be with us forever, the one thing that does are memories, so while we may be limited in where we can go, we can still be creative and make more memories with our loved ones. If normally we are busy everyday at work, now we can spend time to play some board games with our children, we can sing Karaoke, dance, take a walk, go biking, check out some trails, just make more memories and live each moment for the moment we are there. Our children will always remember that this may be some of the best moments in their life.
