A pause for reflection, a chance for connection

Photo by Thomas Grams on Unsplash

In the summer of 2020, I spent a thoughtful month working with my friend and colleague, Naava Frank, on answering the question, “if COVID has driven us all into our own spaces, how are people learning and adapting to the pandemic?” Unfortunately, as Steve Kelner reminds us in his recent blog post, it’s a question that we must continue to ask.

Isolated or stressed (or both!), we can freeze. We can, as Steve puts it, narrow our focus to surviving. Or, we might just keep plowing ahead, striving, in lieu of truly learning and adapting to the moment. It’s a point that Naava and I had described in November 2020, in this article, where we explained that stressed humans need support, to know that their burdens are shared, their efforts appreciated by a community – or network – of their peers. When we are connected, we can unlock each other’s capacity to learn. To thrive, rather than strive or just survive.[1]

Through 2020 and 2021, the question lingered.  For people whose businesses - whose lives - are at the level of surviving or striving (head down, plowing on through), it’s not that they’ve chosen that path rather than thriving. Sometimes, when we’re overwhelmed, tired, or have just lost sight of how to do anything else, going into survival mode or “plow ahead and this will all go away” mode is all we can do.

What do we need to help us catch our breath?  When coping with the complexities feels like too much to ask, sometimes you have to start small – with you.  

So, when Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch reached out and asked me to talk about the end of the year in their Practicing Connection podcast, I knew exactly what I wanted to cover.

I encourage you to listen to the podcast (on apple /Stitcher/Google podcasts), and take the time to ask yourself the core questions. Map out where you are, what’s available to you. And then lift your head and consider where you want to go.

Don’t miss Jessica’s thoughtful dive into the challenge of accepting help, roughly 19 minutes into the podcast;  it can be harder than you expect, to accept others’ help, or to leverage your own team, rather than switching into command and control.   

And let me know! Where are you? What do you have? And what will you do with it, in the coming year?

[1] We shared some of that with Jess and Bob last season, on their Practicing Connection podcast. You can find the episode here: apple podcasts/ Stitcher, with a bonus exercise on how to map your network, to identify your available resources, and understand where you need to strengthen your network.