The world’s leaders have realised that some drastic measures must take place to combat this and our daily lives have to change because of it.
There’s this call for us to stay at home, practice social distancing and stay away from public spaces. The familiar life we had has been totally disrupted in order for us to beat this virus.
What can we learn from this?
I’m sure this pandemic will teach us many things; one lesson I see in this is that sometimes we reach a boiling point, where something really isn’t working anymore and that something needs to be…disrupted. It even goes as far as reminding us that certain situations call for extreme measures in order for us to bring something under control.
A lot of people work best when their life is in a rhythm. It tends to help us cope, survive and thrive better in work, exercise, play, travel etc.
Rhythms are really good for us and necessary. Sometimes, however, our rhythms become no longer helpful; or never were helpful in the first place but instead, were toxic habits that crept into our rhythm. An intervention needs to take place.
Sometimes all that is called for is a regular check up on the things in our lives that threaten to become toxic patterns showing up in the face of certain circumstances.
Such as...
THE FEELING OF FAILURE – Michelle Obama said, “Failing is a feeling long before it is an outcome”. We doubt ourselves and the low level of confidence then begins to infiltrate and take over. Here, failure must be disrupted.
We must move to a place where we experience success – even if it’s small. Don’t keep doing something over again that makes you feel bad about yourself. If it’s apart of your job then ask, can I disrupt this by adding a sense of success?
Disrupting it with the simplest task that I know I can win at is powerfully refreshing.
THE FEELING OF SUCCESS – Why ? Surely we want to strive to succeed and thrive? There are a few reasons.
Firstly, the more we value it the more we fear failure. This leads us down a road of safety, comfort zones, protection of or success and not growth.
Secondly, the reputation it brings. If I’m successful at something, people box me into that and I feel the pressure to just conform into doing what my reputation tells me to do.
HABITS – We’ve all got habits and they always serve us at some level. A habit could be going onto news24 every day with the purpose of wanting to know what’s going on, and it can cause anxiety. Here we might need to say, okay I need to give this a months break.
Perhaps it’s how we eat – slow down, disrupt the chew by placing the fork down and taste the flavours.
RELATIONSHIPS – Expectations and entitlements are an enemy of peace – they can turn something which was done out of a place of desire into an expected duty which makes it un-joyful. Sometimes a bit of an ebb and flow helps with this, creating space for people to become aware again of the value of what’s being done by their significant other.
MEETINGS – Meetings are good and we all know business needs them. But they also need the right people, right topic, right amount of time. Sometimes the meeting is commenced with a good reason and need. But over time the meeting loses it’s focus and begins to become “A wasted time” type of meeting. Perhaps we need to stop the meeting when it gets there. Or practice regularly asking, “why are we having the meeting”
IDEA CREATION – In our book Playfully Engaged, we talk about becoming the hippy. It is a notion towards the 1950’s, where so much advancement took place thanks to the hippies. They were almost the forefathers of the tech revolution that took place. One of the reasons for this is that they were counter cultural – seeing tech as liberation and not a threat. Sometimes we need to become a hippy towards our ways of thinking and even the things we fear or dislike. It sounds goofy…. But purposefully disrupt yourself by occasionally arguing against your belief – you could discover some holes you need to dig into!
2020.…Three months ago we were all saying, 2020 year of plenty! Many of us are now looking at it and asking who started playing the game of JUMANJI. So many are already feeling its repercussions…. it’s already teaching us things. We’ve got to take these crazy, yet necessary next few months simply as they come and be responsible for makings sure we keep doing the next right thing. We’re the instigators in many areas of our lives.
So…what is it that you might need to put a halt on and disrupt? We might need to find a new normal, a new rhythm.