[Illustration by the amazing Sue Kerr]
In New Zealand it has just been announced that from this Thursday, we start transitioning out of lockdown and in to a lower alert level. This will mean the re-opening of most businesses, schools, travel within the country and socialising with groups no greater than 10 people. This is a huge transition from where we have been. Before we go rushing back into ‘life’ again, let’s take a moment to pause, reflect, take stock, and start out lives again on purpose, and with the courage to learn from our experience, let go, and re-shape our lives going forward.
If you’re anything like me, you have mixed feelings about re-entering ‘normal’ life, or as close to what your past normal life used to be like (the ‘new normal’). On the one hand you are excited about the return of some freedoms you’ve missed and of schools starting up again. And on the other hand you are feeling anxious about being thrown back into a full life again. Whatever your situation, things have changed.
If I’m really honest I lean more towards the anxious side. Not that I am anxious about the virus per se – I’m not – I just don’t want to go leaping back into what life was like before this experience of staying home with my family for six weeks. I know from talking to people that I’m not alone: a lot of us have enjoyed this enforced time at home (albeit despite its challenges!) and aren’t looking forward to our bubbles completely popping after all.
Why are we feeling like this? Surely we should be chomping at the bit for our old life? And what does this say about the way we’ve been living our lives?
I don’t know you all personally but I can take a stab at what this fear we are feeling is. It’s not that we don’t want things like schools to start, do a bit of socialising and the occasional meal out. It’s that we don’t want to go back to the things that we (perhaps only newly realised) do not like about living a full life. We don’t want to just ‘go back to things’ mindlessly, without consideration and intention. There are things we just haven’t missed, and we are not in a hurry to return to them.
But we are afraid. Afraid of saying no, afraid of choosing more wisely. Afraid of letting people down, afraid what others may think of our new choices. Perhaps we are afraid of losing people, money, status.
Personally, what I’ve realised about myself during my lockdown is the exceptionally high value I’ve placed on socialising. I know where this comes from: as a child I was shy and insecure. I had attachment issues. I didn’t make a group of friends that I felt totally comfortable with until I was 16, and from there, fortunately, my friendships went from strength to strength. I had developed the belief that as long as I’m doing something with a group of other people, then it’s worthwhile doing. It’s like I was not living properly unless we were all doing it together. In other words, I got my self-esteem from surrounding myself with people at all times.
To some degree of course this is a truth: people need people. However, there’s degrees of it that I want to take into account. I’ve prioritised saying ‘yes’ to social invitations at the expense of my own wellbeing and sometimes the wellbeing of my family, and fairly recently, too.
I’ve always thought of myself as an extrovert who just had to socialise at every opportunity. Now I’m looking forward to saying ‘no’ more often and channeling my inner introvert, and that of the family, too. It won’t be easy, it will take will and courage and different decision making.
I’m also not that keen on returning to rushing around getting to places on time, my endless to-do lists and multitasking to fit it all in. I like how empty my calendar is! My mission will be to keep it empty, only putting in the things that spark joy, and not at the expense of my other values. For another thing I’ve definitely learned about myself: I can be very happy with less, much, much less.
As I’ve said repeatedly, this has been a gift given to us and is the perfect time to make changes. So, how do you re-enter life and its activities mindfully, purposely, with intention and courage?
I’m a firm believer that we all have our own inner-wisdom. Sometimes it is just heavily obscured by a load of other crap, like social pressure and expectations, insecurity, perfectionism and people-pleasing. What this means is that we have a sorting exercise to do!
No matter how busy life is, we can all find 30 minutes in a day. Take that time to get rid of distractions, either be alone or talk to your significant other if you have one. Get quiet:
- Make one list of all the things you’ve missed, and on the same list what you’ve enjoyed about being at home. This is what you value, what really matters to you.
- Make a second list of all the things you haven’t missed, that you’re not in a hurry to get back to. These are the things that no longer fit with your values. If your job is on that list, then you have some work to do in identifying how you can work differently. Perhaps it’s working remotely more often, perhaps it’s working less and spending much more time with the kids.
- For the list of things you haven’t missed, write down what you want to drop completely, and what you want to change. Be brutally honest with yourself! No one has to know, for now anyway. For example you may want to ditch the gym membership and just continue biking with your family. You may not want to completely ditch a group of friends, but you want to change the way you catch up, and what you do together.
- Lastly, ask yourself: what action do I need to make these changes? And how can I cultivate the courage required to do that? As I said, most blocks to change will be driven by social expectations and fear based: the word ‘should’ will feature highly here. Here’s where channeling some Brene Brown and her work on vulnerability and courage can be a game changer. If you don’t know her look up her Ted talks. Oh, and her new Podcast – Unlocking Us – is just great, too.
Leave a Facebook comment or PM me with your insights, I’ll help where I can.
Love, Charlotte.