How to pivot and re-invent yourself with purpose

As an extrovert, I thought I would go stir crazy as we all quickly responded to shelter in place orders. The day EY announced we were moving into a work from home model, I ordered yoga props and work out equipment to at least try to keep my mind and body healthy and do everything under my control to avoid a mental breakdown.

Waking up on that first Monday, after we had already cancelled our family Spring break trip, I logged on with my EY family and scheduled our first virtual meeting. Many more virtual meetings were quickly to follow, and two months later I am surprised to say that I feel like I am thriving more than ever before.

Sharing my thoughts and feelings online has become a hobby, but more importantly it’s allowed me to stay connected and engaged with others who are navigating the same issues. We truly are seeing that we are in this together. It’s also made me think I should share some of the top ways I have found help me adapt and cope during these extraordinary days:

• Try something new every week – What worked during week 1 will not necessarily work during week 8. COVID is making the world move faster and being able to adapt to change is even more important now. We’ve been talking about transformation for years, and the time has arrived. Not everything you try will work, but if you don’t try you will never know.
• Don’t chase your own tail– At the end of week 2, I felt exhausted. I had no time already, and homeschooling was just about to start. While I was super busy, I had actually accomplished very little. Part of it was simply the fact that we were all administratively adjusting to the new way of doing things. However, I quickly realized that if I attended every single virtual meeting that I was invited to I would have no time to do my own work. Being purposeful about what I wanted to accomplish every single day helped me make the right decisions of how to go about the day and avoid busy work.
• Establish your boundaries - Working from home with clients and co-workers all over the globe makes it easy for you to work around the clock. Blocking time on my calendar, establishing boundaries through family meals and daily workouts is bringing some sort of normalcy to my days. It helps me sleep well and come refreshed and creative every morning.
• Be positive and re-invent yourself – We are our choices, so choose wisely! How we choose to show up to our co-workers, friends and family matters. My father always told me, “Life is a mirror and if you smile, people will smile back at you!” This is truer than ever before. I choose to be positive about how I face the challenges of the day. This is once in a lifetime opportunity to re-invent yourself. Embrace it!
• Relate to people – The pandemic levels the playing field. Don’t believe it is harder for others because of their personal situation. This is hard for everybody – single, married, with little kids, with babies, with grown children, empty nesters, young, old, with a roommate, in an apartment, in a big house. We are all dealing with the emotions of a pandemic that preys on our deepest fears and being deprived of so many things we’ve grown accustomed to. Never forget we are all on this together, dealing with very similar fears, emotions and hopes.
• Master the art of virtual presence - It will be a while before people will be comfortable around other people, so we might as well figure out the art of virtual relationships. I am connecting to people in ways I had never connected before and mastering life through the screen.
• Be patient with the new – All of us are dealing with so much and none of us know exactly when and how we move into the next phase. Through this process, homeschooling has been the hardest for me. Teachers, parents and students have not been trained for remote learning. This has been a journey I have not mastered yet. I try to remind myself that we are experiencing it together and am hopeful that I will get there as I learn a little bit every week.
• Find your purpose – I’ve always believed that having a purpose makes everything you do feel so much more rewarding. My personal purpose is to “help people overcome their fears to achieve their full potential." I grew up under the umbrella of unconscious bias with so much fear of the unknown. Exploring the world after college helped me overcome these fears. I learned to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. I grow when I immerse myself in uncharted territories and I wish everybody tried it a bit. That’s where the magic happens.

No doubt there is much we don’t know, and the road ahead can be daunting. More than ever, we should overcome our fears and embrace the change around us. The Transformative Age has arrived. I am confident the future forward will be bright. It will depend on how we choose to show-up, re-invent ourselves and let the magic happen being comfortable with the new, even if uncomfortable at first.