Hey do you guys remember starting this year with a boundless fresh optimism? There was a collective sense of hope, I recall, back on January 1st, 2020 B.C. — yes — B.C. — that’s Before Covid. The world was a simpler place then. We welcomed 2020, the year of perfect vision, with excitement and big dreams. Now pretty much anything that happened before March 13th feels like it may as well have been a hundred years ago... a different time… you might reflect on it with the same nostalgia one regards a Norman Rockwell painting.
I personally began this year with a few goals and wrote them down in the back of my planner, my old school paper planner, so I could revisit them throughout the year and make sure that I was still on target. Some of my goals are modest and some of them a stretch. Some of them have changed. One or two of my goals have been completely scrapped- this isn't the year I am traveling to Japan. But in January I also decided on a word for the year. Many of us did, it was kind of a thing… my word was POWERFUL.
This might seem like a joke, but I promise, I’m serious:
How are you doing with your New Year's resolutions and goals?
Have your goals and intentions changed for the year?
September is always a great time to evaluate how the year has been going for us personally and professionally. And this year it might be even more important than ever to reconnect with your goals and dreams, why they are important to you and what achieving them will feel like. How incredible would it feel to start 2021, rising from the ashes, having accomplished what you had set out to do?
Of course, there is still a great deal of uncertainty ahead as we wait for the seemingly inevitable alien invasion of 2020, the likely cluster F of an election, and whatever happens after schools reopen. Here’s the thing though, there is always going to be an amount of uncertainty because change is the only constant. We have very little control over these factors, but for one very important thing: ourselves.
My friends, there is a good idea out there that who you are is not determined by your circumstances. You are not your situation. You are not a bounced check, a disability, a cancelled wedding or a closed business. It’s helpful to consider this in the year of raging dumpster fires. You are a person experiencing a circumstance or a situation and you have a choice HOW to make meaning of it and experience it.
I have seen this year brush away all the superfluous fluff and illuminate our weak spots as a nation, in organizations and as individuals. It has brought us to our knees, raised a mirror to our deepest selves and shown us just where we are most vulnerable. This, good friends, may very well be what perfect vision looks like.
I don’t know one person whose life hasn't been altered by the circumstances of 2020, and each one of us has had the opportunity to decide how to make sense of it. On the front line, the grocery store line and at the kitchen table, I’ve seen this year pummel those who are already fragile and make heroes out of people who were already heroes. I have also seen the meek rise and the mighty fall.
My point is that we still have time to live focused and intentionally in 2020 with brand new awareness of who we are. It is possible to finish this year, perhaps a little bloodied, with a few more scars, maybe a little more humble yet better than how we started it.
With four months left on the calendar, now is a great time to live your WORD, lose that Covid 19, reimagine your career, Be POWERFUL, learn to gut a fish, make an impact, write your book, plan your wedding again, live off the grid or whatever your intention or goal for 2020 now is.
What if 2020 isn't a dumpster garbage fire? Perhaps it is the year of perfect vision after all, if we choose to see it that way.
Anna Scelfo, CPC ELI-MP
New Growth Coaching LLC
www.NewGrowthCoaching.com