If I think about 2020, I think about a bad dream… the pandemic didn’t really happen! This was a test to humanity, to see how strong and resilient we are!
Imagine on December 31st at 11:59 pm, the spell will be broken, and the new year will start without the pandemic, and we could be free to travel, hug our loved ones, hang out with our friends, go to restaurants, and the children could once again play together and attend school as before.
Isn’t that good?
Think about the freedom we have to live without the fear of getting sick or passing the virus to someone.
Think about the hospital operations going back to normal.
Good, right?
But then comes this idea of what it actually means to come back to normal?
We are not the same, as people.
The jobs are not all the same.
So many business models have changed.
I started to think about the Vision for 2021, and I got this feeling of hopelessness. The plan for 2020 all turned down! It hurts just thinking about it.
There were so many changes in one period of time.
I still make jokes about toilet paper, and I still mention to my neighbors, when we come back to normal, we have to organize a big reunion at my house, as if it was for next month.
It has already passed too long to think like that, I know.
I turned my guest room into an office, and we are buying 2 monitors to have a better place at home to work.
My word of the year for 2020 was INTENTIONAL. I had to go back to understand why I chose it. I think the word of the year for most of the people during 2020 was FIGURE IT OUT.
Like, figure out how to be at home and work from home full time, with family, figure out a new routine, figure out a new way to work out, figure out how to do virtual school, figure out how to play with finances, how to socialize, and how to reinvent the business.
Then I don’t think we have to figure it out once… I feel we have to figure it out at different times this year.
The first couple of months was all about the surprise, shock, and reacting positively to it.
I remember making posts and videos of encouragement for the first weeks of the pandemic until there were no more weeks to count but months!
Then it was about to establish a new routine, and now about planning the future within this new normal.
Look, I remember the first time I had to put a mask on my daughter who is 2 years old, I felt so bad, and complained so much! Now, it feels weird not to use it.
We changed. We reinvented a new way to live.
My message today is inspired by a book I read by Sarah Lewis entitled “Rise” and the subtitle is “creativity, a gift of failure, and the search of mastery”.
Sarah Lewis mentions it is a cliché to say simply we learn from the failure. It is not the failure itself, it is the creative process we go through after the failure. The creative process, the capability to reinvent yourself after the failure is what makes the magic happen.
All the success stories we listen to after failures are not about the failure but the story after the failure, the critical role of play in achieving innovation, and the importance of grit and the creative process.
Look at this passage:
“Success motivates us, but a near win can propel us in an ongoing quest. One of the most vivid examples of this comes when we look at the difference between Olympic silver medalists and bronze medalists after a competition. Thomas Gilovich and his team from Cornell studied this difference and found that the frustration silver medalists feel compared to bronze, who are typically a bit happier to have just not received fourth place and not medaled at all, gives silver medalists a focus on follow-up competition.”
My point is next year whatever your plan is, get ready to REINVENT yourself, your business, your home, your routine, your health.
And it is time to adapt intentionally! Be aware, you don’t know the things you don’t know, but you proved during 2020 that you are strong to reinvent your life.
The decision is yours! The decision of which story you want to tell!
Nobody likes to fail and live in uncertainty, but everybody likes a story with a great idea, with a happy ending.
The ideas have to be tested, and the results are simply indicators of the path you are following to a happy end!
How are you reinventing yourself this 2021 so you can show up as your best self? Let me know by leaving a comment down below!
To fully thriving this 2021,
AnnaJo
