Everyone believes that they are the fairest person in the room.
To them, the way your acting: Your opinion is the biased one.
They say that good decision making come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.
Let’s be honest though, unless you are 102 years old (1918 Spanish Flu), we have never experienced anything like this before. Which means we don’t really know what to expect with the next step in all of this because there is no experience to draw back on.
Since everyone’s compass is a bit different from our own, each of us now creates a new standard, a set of rules, on how others should be behaving. No ones will match with others.
Which creates tension with the choices ahead.
How do we balance the impossible task of staying inside/social distancing versus opening the economy back up?
63% of Americans can’t come up with $500 for an emergency. So, most are not prepared to shelter in place the next 18 months until a vaccine is developed.
That in itself is a daunting challenge. The soonest we have ever developed a vaccine is 5 years. So, the timeline is difficult but not impossible. But then once you have a vaccine you have the challenges of production and distribution. (Who goes first?)
Social distancing saves lives and flattens the curve but it won’t ultimately stop the virus. Many are being put in a precarious situation, being forced back to work and increasing exposure. Hard choices are being made and unfortunately some will use this to exploit a personal agenda.
Bottom line: Let’s not be quick to judge others for the decisions they are making. We are all scared. Blame and intense criticism is only contributing to the violent conversations. This is a long road. The only way to change people’s minds is to craft a story that will inspire change. We can’t do this without first having empathy. We have to hear everyone’s needs.
Empathy leads to change. Not the other way around.
Hat tip: Take 10 minutes and read the well thought out piece by Bill Gates explaining the path to a vaccine. Very informative.
As the critic is quick to point out, there are those out there that don’t deserve our compassion, or our love or attention.
What about the murderer, the rapist, the corrupt, the dictator…
To this, we say: To be angry is to find fault.
Which doesn’t make us the best judge of characters because we can’t see all the choices and events that have lead to someone’s worst moment.
This isn’t to excuse bad behavior but rather we must understand when we are picking people apart we are only contributing to the violence.
Viktor Frankl wasn’t just a prisoner of war or a Holocaust survivor or a refugee.
He was a neurologist and a psychiatrist.
And that was the hat he chose to wear.
Regardless of the circumstances, he had a role to play, a need to fill.
The opportunity to do great work is never limited by our circumstances.
When pushing my 3-year-old on a bike without training wheels, she asked for me to quit holding her.
As I let go, she would fall over. So, I picked her up and we start again until she says again let go.
This time, however, I tell her I can’t until she learns to ride by herself. Quickly, she lost interest and went for the scooter.
Couple things:
1. There is a separation of what we believe and our abilities.
2. Despite this challenge, we don’t need someone over our shoulder reinforcing what we can’t do (yet).
3. Yet is important here. Perhaps today, we can’t ride a bike. But that isn’t forever. Tomorrow is another opportunity.
Lesson learned: I should of let her keep falling and keep trying. Squashing believes only leads us down a road of what we believe are safe choices.
In 1961, The Tokens produced a duet of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” that would become a #1 hit in the US.
Except they didn’t write the song. And the neither did the singers before them.
It was originally written by Soloman Linda 30 years prior to The Tokens. And to this day, he still doesn’t receive credit by companies for the countless remakes. Including the likes of Disney.
Perhaps, one of the greatest thefts of all time when you consider the millions of dollars it has generated over the last eight decades.
To feel cheated would be justified.
And really, we have all felt taken advantage of in one way or another. Some worse than others.
But if we are to change the narrative, if we are to heal from these injustices we need to remember that we are still in control. We still have a choice to make.
What other people do is never the cause of how we feel.
It’s easy to talk yourself into believing you are an imposter.
That you can’t be one of the greats.
That you don’t have enough skills or experience.
You lack the “talent” or don’t have a voice.
Internally, you will never be good enough. There will never be enough reassurance to silence the voice in our head that incessantly reminds us that you’re not ready.
This fear is never going away.
But when we decide to take action anyway, we are acknowledging that there are more important things than fear.
You have a job to do.
When there is pressure to grab more attention, instead go earn trust.
When there is pressure to go faster, be deliberate.
Where there is pressure to take a shortcut, choose the long cut.
When there is pressure to race for the bottom, make things better.
When there is pressure to look the other way, stand up and speak out.
When there is pressure for efficiency, build resiliency.
Where there is pressure to squeeze more profit, make a difference.
When there is pressure to speak, listen.
It’s a natural reaction to tell ourselves a story that shrinks the challenges we face. We do this to create bite-size chunks, to make things digestible.
Yet, with this pattern, we begin to believe that our problems are not worthy of being problematic. I mean look at the state of the world? This economy? Why should anyone care? We have bigger things to deal with.
This train of thought overtime makes us feel worse and worse about ourselves. Perpetuating the downward spiral of negative thought patterns.
The alternative is we can expand our vision.
When we begin to see that the world/universe is much bigger than the world we operate in, our problems have this ability to fade.
Perspective changes everything. Same problems different lens.
Pillars of Creation captured by NASA
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, to pivot means to change your opinions, statements, decisions so that they are different from what they were before.
I can’t think of a better skill to have right now. We didn’t know the future before Coronavirus and today it is filled with even more uncertainty.
So…
If you are laid off? Pivot.
Global recession? Pivot.
Cat explodes? Pivot.
The time to be nimble is now.
It’s easier to paddle when the wind on your back.
