Life will not go back to “normal” - it will be different. The human race has been through disruption before. It will go through disruption again. We will be fine. We will create new solutions.
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I have to admit for the first time I have experienced hopelessness. As a person with "positivity" in my top three Gallup strengths, this feeling is a very new thing.
For the first time in my life, I understand despair. The word despair comes from the Latin word ‘desperare' meaning "to be without hope”.
Ironically, the word hope means “a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen” - and not much has been happening! Actually, a lot has been happening but not the stuff that lights this extrovert up...no events, no conferences, no venues filled with humans eager to learn something new or share something interesting.
The past 18 months started to wear me down. The stops, the starts, the restrictions, and boring new rules of life. All of this had started to erode my normal mindset and I could feel myself giving up. I had to do something. I know that action keeps the darkness away. I planned a meeting. A meeting for one. The agenda was simple. I needed to decide what I was going to do. I was definitely not going to let circumstances dilute my potential. This is not who I am. I refuse to be a victim of circumstance. A quote from Maya Angelou came to mind:
“You may not control all the events that happen to you,
but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”
The outcome of my meeting was I decided to launch a cluster. A ‘me’ cluster. I was going to create the learning that I needed. What I knew that I desperately needed to hear was “It’s all good - there is so much to be hopeful about." The market was: me and the method was: a three-step process facilitated by yours truly!
In the cluster model, there are three intersections: Problems, preferences, & perspective.
The intersection of message and market is problems.
The intersection of market and method is preferences.
The intersection of message and method is perspective.
I love these distinctions. They make clusters thorough and relevant. This cluster focuses on my problems: the limits, the lockdowns, the boring new processes involved in everything we do. The largest problem being the current feeling of despair and hopelessness. A reframe was required.
My preferences haven’t changed. I love the power of choice and the agency to choose. I choose being with people. I choose courage over fear. I choose hope-full over hope-less.
And then I moved on to perspective. How I choose to look at things. I had sat on the floor with my despair. I didn’t enjoy it. I had looked at reality in the eye and lost interest. The only thing left to do was to go up. To look up. To lift my head into the future.
Here is what I know:
The world is returning to a new abnormal.
We have survived 100% of the hard stuff that has happened. That is a wonderful statistic that shows we have a very good chance of surviving anything else hard that comes our way.
The world is reopening. Concert tours are being released. Planes are starting to fly. Processes are being put in place so we can get some of our previous freedoms back.
Life will not go back to “normal” - it will be different. The human race has been through disruption before. It will go through disruption again. We will be fine. We will create new solutions.
I then realised what was missing. I had another ‘P’ to add to my cluster. Problems, preferences, perspective, & patience! Patience is what is required. Patience is not my strongest suit. If patience could be tested, I think I would be negative! But I will wait. I will not be passive. I will remind myself every day of what is possible.
I will control what I can and I will look up.
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Lisa O'Neill
CEO