PhotoCredit: Brady Knoll Pexels
Isolation feels a lot like swimming in the ocean to me. Some days it’s awesome; I feel alive, refreshed, meditative and energized. Other days every stroke feels like hard work.
The ocean is ever-changing. One day it will work for you and the next day it will swallow you whole. It's the ultimate change-environment.
While being stuck at home might feel like the opposite of a change environment, it’s clear that nothing is as it was. Each day is oddly different, despite the monotony and the same-ness.
Yes, this will eventually normalize. The big question is when? Swimming in the ocean gets progressively challenging the longer you are in the water.
Challenge is a wonderful thing. So we can embrace this. We can innovate for ourselves and our businesses. We can come out of this stronger than we went into it.
We should absolutely set big goals for ourselves and make a plan to use this weird isolation time to do something we have always put off. My goal is to learn to do a yoga handstand. Being upside down feels about right at the moment. It also requires me to work on my balance. I need to do a lot of work on my balance.
But challenge can’t be constant. Drowning is a real possibility. I had to pull back on the handstands last week because I overdid it. I lost my balance in the bigger sense. Everything was hurting.
When you are operating in a change environment, challenge has two components. We need to assess how we are performing against our goal but we also need to assess what level we think we should be performing at. Most of us think we can operate daily at a 9 or 10. Or is that just me? And daily has now become all 7 days of the week - we have lost the separation of our weekends.
It is critical in a change environment that you give context to your capacity. Ask yourself, “what is my level today? Is it a 10, again?”
We are playing a long game here. Check in on your goal, assess your performance and - more important - assess your capacity each day. Ask yourself what you need to do to move closer to your performance goal. If you are hurting, you might need a break. Or maybe do something different. You know you will come back stronger tomorrow if you do.
And if you are drowning, please raise your hand for help. The beautiful thing happening right now is community. We are all in this together.