A long December...

Covid -19. Time to reflect on whats important at Christmas… 

At the end of 2019, as I sat contemplating the year ahead, I didn’t have “never ending pandemic” in mind. Yet, here we are at the end of 2020 with Christmas in a few days. Life as we knew it, and as we hoped and imagined it would be, has been turned completely upside down.

Suddenly, our work lives, social lives, and family lives look completely different. We wear a mask everywhere we go. We distance from others. Large gatherings are illegal. Many of us haven’t seen our friends and family — at least under normal circumstances — for months.

It’s impossible to know when this will all be over. Will it be 6 months? 12 months? Longer than that? Will the vaccine work? The news is ever changing and it’s impossible to know which ‘experts’ to trust. This is a new virus we are dealing with so there is no real way to know how everything is going to play out and how this crisis will finally resolve.

As we’ve seen, however, no matter how tough it is to adapt to these strange times, life still goes on. Life still goes on! So even in the midst of so much adversity I took inspiration at home from my very clever wife who during the first lockdown completely re-did her website and changed the face of her business, switched and pivoted the way she delivers her lessons to clients and during the second national lockdown she built a new studio! Me, well I was simply stuck in a job I didn’t like. I was stressed, I could feel the physical effects of this stress in my body and the last thing I felt like doing was meditating, taking some exercise, stretching, eating better, drinking less and all of the other things that you know you should be doing but, when feeling stressed, maybe even a little tiny, incy wincy little bit depressed perhaps…. Well, I did none of the above.

So, what did I do? Well I quit my job of course! It was a big step. I knew I had to do it but I was terrified. I had the mortgage, wife, kids, car loan, credit card and all of the other things that demand attention but sometimes when you ask the world for a little help something or somebody comes along. Of course, I was open to that help and a brilliant opportunity found me. I joined a new ‘big’ corporate company. Trina Solar and I haven’t looked back. Trina as a business welcomed me with open arms. They are a huge company with over 14,000 employees worldwide but they still managed to make me feel welcome and special which is clever when your teams are spread across the globe. I had a two-week induction where I met literally hundreds of people, all smiling, all keen to know about me and what I would be doing at Trina and how could they help. The little things that count, like the laptop and phone arriving ready to go, emails set up, accounts in place and then a huge Christmas hamper arrived. I’ve been thrilled and consider myself extremely lucky to be part of a fantastic team.

It can be extremely challenging to manage the emotions that come with a major job change on top of dealing with the stress of living through this pandemic. So I took the opportunity to make some simple changes that helped me….

I turned off the news; Yes, I’m a news junky and we all want to remain informed, and we all want to keep up to date with the latest stats on what is happening with COVID, but there comes a point where it’s too much. Its system overload with news, statistics and comments from every direction and that’s not good for our mental health. Especially when you are dealing with a life transition, absorbing day after day the latest terrible news can deplete you and can be detrimental to our emotional well-being.

So, I made a point of deleting my news apps from my phone, so the news isn’t constantly being fed to me. I did, however watch the news, but only once a day and I have to admit, I stopped watching good old ‘auntie’ The BBC and switched to C4 news. I also turned off when they started talking Brexit (don’t get me started; I am still so upset that this is actually happening and it isn’t some kind of weird dream).

Work on Living in the Moment. One of the problems with the COVID-19 pandemic is that many of us are hyper-focused on it (when is this going to be over? Am I going to get sick?) that we rarely just live in the moment. Jen (my lovely wife) is excellent at living in the moment and its something I want to learn how to do more of. I am a worrier. I worry that I am a worrier and I worry and overthink everything. Sometimes my brain just needs a rest!

In some ways, undergoing my work / life transition has forced me to live in the moment a little bit, which has helped. I may take this a stage further and try a meditation app and try taking our dogs for a walk without my phone! We shall see, one step at a time!

Notice Difficult Feelings. Even though my transition to a new job during COVID feels very positive, it has its own set of stressors. Its inherently stressful and I’ve been flooded with extremely challenging feelings. But; I decided to notice those feelings and treat myself gently. No more ‘toughen up’ (like an old school rugby coach); I treated these feelings the same way as I would treat a friend who was stressed; with kindness. It was easy to feel like my feelings don’t matter given the turmoil the rest of the world is dealing with right now — the losses and pain experienced as result of the pandemic — but that isn’t the case. Everyone’s feelings matter right now (and in the moment).

I Looked for Support. Almost all of us need some support right now. Living through this pandemic is tough on everyone. Even if we haven’t been personally affected by the virus itself, almost all of us have experienced adversity over the last 12 months and I am very lucky I have a support network around me that I can call on should I need it. It starts with my wife, family, kids and stretches out from there to my mates, my rugby club or cycle buddies and now even some of my new work colleagues. I appreciate every one of them and I know, I am very lucky

Know That You Are Not Alone. Perhaps the most important thing to remember, as we navigate this time in our life is, that we are not alone. It sounds cliché, but it’s the truth. Every single one of us is trying to get through our lives during a time like no other. Many of us have had to deal with the added stress of a major life transition or disruption on top of the everyday chaos of the pandemic (and living in the UK)!

It gives me some comfort to know that I am not the only one who is finding these circumstances incredibly challenging. But we will get through this — we all will. Look after yourself, pandemics apparently don’t last forever, even when it feels like they will never end.

Happy Christmas!

(I sit writing this while listening to one of my favourite bands The Counting Crows and their song A long December from their album Recovering the Satellites).