The shadow and light of 2020

I struggle to find the right words for 2020, in the beginning, I only had bad things to say, but the truth is a lot of good has come out of the year. It’s too easy to tell a single story, but life is complex, the story of 2020 is multi-layered. It’s also not always easy to see how other people are experiencing life right now, social media is skewed, and we filter the messages we share.

No one wants to pour out all their troubles publicly, but in some ways I think it’s important to be honest about the ups and downs. I’ve been very quiet on social media, especially facebook.

On linked-in I’ve been mainly voicing my concern about the ‘shadow pandemic’ the mental and emotional health challenges we are all walking blindly into. Recently I’ve shared 2 big wins, one that I’ve written a book on Mental Fitness which will be published in May, the other that I’ve grown and expanded my business. But after I posted about these I realized that it’s easy for people to think life is sweet for me, of course, because I’ve not shared the challenges. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t share the shadow side, because it diminishes our full experience. When we share the struggles it bursts the illusion and it also gives people the permission to own and share theirs. I think that’s deeply important in 2020 and onward, it’s ok to not be ok.

Let me say that again. It’s ok to not be ok.

We are living through a pandemic, our futures, our goals, our hopes and dreams all got sideswiped. They say it’s the great equalizer, that we’re all in the same boat. But we’re not. As some clever person put it – we are in the same storm, but we are all in different boats.

It’s important that we are authentic to our own experience and that we are also open to fully hearing the experience of others – that’s how we break the taboo.

This year has kicked my ass. When lock down first happened in Spain (where I live) we had really draconian measures. There was no ‘daily exercise’ for us. We had helicopters in the sky and police on the streets telling us to get back inside. My children, 2.5 and 4.5yrs old did not leave our apartment for 45 days straight. Let that sink in. Children were forbidden to leave their homes for 45 days. My husbands income got wiped out overnight (he ran airbnbs).

My business went on pause as our corporate clients panicked and tried to work out how their own businesses were going to cope. But none of this was the worst of it. My Dad was diagnosed with cancer in January. He passed away in May when we were all still in lock down. If he had deteriorated in any other time of his 73yrs on this earth, I would have been right by his side, 2020 stole that away. Death is complex.

Death during a pandemic is traumatic.

I went to my Dad’s funeral via a whatsapp video call.

I’m sharing this, because it’s easy not to.

I’ve not shared it before here because I’ve not been ready to.

Also because I don’t want sympathy. That’s not why I’m sharing it (and that’s also why I’m not sharing more of the story), what I want is to be honest and to give others permission to be honest about the hard edge of 2020. It has kicked my ass, but I’m kicking its ass back.

Here’s the thing that really matters….

What happens in life is not what destroys us, it’s the narrative that we create around what happens that takes us down.

I could go into great detail about the first half of the year, it would wrench your heart and you’d nod along in sympathy with me, I could so easily make myself a victim of this year and you’d be there with tissues and virtual hugs.

But that doesn’t serve me.

That narrative won’t get me up in the morning, it will keep me in bed under my duvet, which is no place to live a life.

The truth is, in life there are always multiple narratives. The good and the bad live together, the problems and the solutions, the impossible and the possible.

We have a negativity bias in how we perceive the world. We are designed to pay more attention to the negative than the positive because the negative could be a threat to our survival. We are pre-programmed to survive and this is a mechanism to help us. But we need to override that natural neurological wiring to ensure that we also see the positive amongst the car crash of 2020. Our minds will naturally fixate in the car crash, we need to actively and consciously see the good things in order to not get lost in the negative story.

The truth is, this year my goal was to travel less, to move some of my business online and to spend more time with my kids – da-daaaaa! I didn’t want those goals delivered via a pandemic, but mission accomplished none the less.

The year give me hyper-focus in the business. During lockdown we created and rolled out our Mental Fitness course which as you can imagine has been in high demand this year. Consequently, it brought us 6 new corporate clients and has become the cornerstone of everything we do (if you’re interested checkout www.symbiapartners.com)

I’ve written a book! How the hell did that happen?! Our kids were at home EVERY DAY for a full 6 months – it shocks me still. But the book has been in me for 7yrs, it was a consequence of this year that drove me with an urgency to get it written (it’s all about Mental Fitness and how it’s our competitive advantage in life and work).

Anyway, my point in all of this is:

- Life is complex, there is awful stuff and great stuff happening at the same time

- Be open about your full experience, don’t judge the hard stuff, the more we talk about it the more we normalize it

- It’s ok to not be ok – it’ doesn’t mean you’re not coping or your weak, it means you’re a human in a global pandemic having a normal human response

- But don’t get lost in the negative narrative as this will take you down

- Strive to see the unexpected positives that have come out of the year, this is where your energy and motivation will come from

- As you tune into the fullness of your own story, make space and time to tune in to the full story of others – we all need to be seen. Not just the social media positive slivers, but be seen in our entirety

Many of us have been working alongside colleagues and team members and think we know what’s going on with them, but don’t know the half of it. I know, because this year we’ve worked with massive companies and people all over the world. I’ve shared time and experiences with thousands of leaders and their teams. We run workshops, webinars, training on Mental Fitness, resilience, navigating uncertainty, playing the long game and so on. What strikes me the most is how much all of us are pretending, because we don’t think it’s ok to say we’re not ok. Because we think we’re supposed to be doing better than we are.

I’ll say it one last time – it’s ok to not be ok.

Acknowledge it, experience it and search for the unexpected positives to give you the motivation and energy to move forward. We do not have control over the pandemic, we don’t have control over governments, over whether the schools will open or shut – but we DO have control over how all of this is going to affect us, we do have control over how we are going to respond.

Is this the year that beat you down you or the year that give your clarity and focus? You get to decide on the narrative – choose a good one.