“I just can’t keep going with this constant change; I can’t wait for things to go back to normal. I feel overwhelmed with taking care of little kids and the changing strategy at work, I wouldn’t say I like change, I like stability. Until I felt like I am catching up with things, every day, I wake up to my manager, letting me know we pivot again. I am just tired and can’t wait for things going back to normal.”
Oh! Change.
Part of my career experience was to take organizations through change. When everyone was feeling as the ground underneath their feet was shaking, I was there excited to take them to the other side of the road, not back to normal.
But there is the Noa who loves helping people and organization go through change; she thrives when she leads teams through change. This Noa feels focused, grounded, strategic, and agile. I know how to work and pivot fast, and it is actually pure fun for me. Indeed, many of my clients thrive right now, and I can even use the word fun regarding how they feel with how they show up in this constant environment. They are sharp, fast, and people trust them and follow them.
Yet, in my personal life it feels as in the last 15 years my life pivot constantly, I can admit and say that every time I thought I could control my life and I will not need to slow down any more for family reasons and at last, can move into full steam with my business, something showed up. First, we had to relocate again, and then I had to establish my coaching business in a new state. Then my husband had to travel more for work, which impacted my schedule, and last we had family issues that required my attention. With the last health issue, my relationship with “When – Then” stopped. What I mean by when-then is that you create in your head a belief that when things are different, then you can achieve what you want. This is a common belief we have with achieving goals, we believe that when we reach a specific goal, we will feel happy, but when we meet the goal – it is doesn’t fill as happy or fulfilling as we expected.
The family health situation was the universe's cruel way of teaching me that life will never fit my needs. Period. Holding on this self-limiting belief was a waste of time, and mostly not being able to achieve what I wanted the way I wanted to make me beyond frustrated. Yep, as I always say, I take my time to learn what the universe is trying to teach me. Still, from the other side of the learning curve, my learning was there would never be a “perfectly normal” things might improve or look different, but I can't recall a time in my life they went back to the same normal - and what is even that normal anyway?
So if like my when-then clients (and the “waiting-Noa), you scan your life in this COVID-19 reality and tell yourself, or others: “when things will go back to normal, then I will feel different,” here are a few things I want to share with you from my learning and the work with my clients during this reality:
Waiting will not serve you
When you tell yourself and others that when things go back to normal, then everything will be fine - what you are doing is expanding the time of feeling frustration and self petty. You extend the waiting.
Anxiety loves waiting
But wait! Isn’t waiting is choosing to be patient? Waiting is actually about not making any decision, and with that, you feel as you are stuck and not move into any action. We humans like having a sense of purpose and feeling stuck can be very frustrating.
Why planning works?
Here is the deal, when we wait, w take on no action, which keeps us in the not knowing. Anxiety and other overwhelming emotions live very well when you have no plan. With no plan, they take over your show of the worry and self-judgment: "what will happen?" "when things will go back to normal?" "why can I be flexible like others?". Making a decision not to wait and designing a plan of how your feelings, thoughts, and actions can look like right now in this reality without losing it is stop waiting. It can be a short term plan - how am I feeling better tomorrow or this week, it doesn't need to be for the next month; anyway we don't know how things will look like in a month. But here is then thing, choosing to stop waiting and moving into a plan makes you feel empowered when you feel empowered, you feel resourceful again, and creativity shows up, and with that, you will stop feeling stuck.
What is even normal?
Stories - we tend to feel and think that everything before was much better than how things are right now. But with so many variables, no one knows how life is going to look like when lock-down ends. I am not saying it can’t happen, but have you considered the possibility that things will never go back to the old normal? Have you considered that even the word normal is kind of 'off' right now?
So how can you move from waiting to designing a short term or longer plan to support how you feel, think, and act right now so you can lower worry, frustration, and even anxiety levels and feel more empowered, creative and seeing results?