What does it mean to thrive? Especially now this question is more on my mind than ever. For New Year’s I chose Thrive to be my word for 2020… ironic at this point I know, go figure. But anyway this post is inspired by something I saw this morning on Instagram.
I sat there for a few moments pondering this; wondering what exactly this person is thinking and feeling. I can empathize and have compassion for this person’s outlook but what doesn’t resonate for me is the victim mentality. I know there is a lot of fear and uncertainty in the world right now, but I feel that on a certain level nothing has really changed. Yes, there is a pandemic happening, but in actuality, the uncertainty of our own mortality has not changed. For all, we know we could peacefully slip away in our sleep tonight. What I can see and feel had changed is that with this pandemic; people are in a way forced to face their own mortality; face their own sense of security in a world where there was already no guarantee that you would get to see another sunrise.
As a coach, I see that this statement is completely based on that person’s survival mechanism or survival strategy to cope. I want to say that by making this post I am not trying to make that person wrong for their beliefs or coping strategy, I just want to illuminate the fact that we still get to choose who we want to be about a situation, and who we want to be as a person during these trying times.
It is important to acknowledge that we all may be affected by this in multiple ways. Financially, career-wise, relationship-wise… the whole spectrum. I do not know that person’s direct set of circumstances, they may have it better off than I do, or they could be worse off. Personally, I will be graduating from Grad school for Acupuncture in May with more debt than you can shake a stick at and maybe a few hundred dollars in my pocket by the time May rolls around. As of right now… acupuncture clinics are non-essential businesses. The clinic where I was hoping to work is doing a hiring freeze. The university requires me to move out of my housing from the university, and don’t know where I will go. (You may be thinking FUCK… in your head right now. Go ahead and say it aloud with me! FUCK!) Thankfully I am blessed to have friends and family that have offered me a place to be quarantined/practice social distancing with, so I will have a roof or a tent over my head, which is something I am so incredibly grateful for.
I could be freaking the hell out worse than I am… but I was kind of in this situation before the pandemic. The only thing that has changed is the circumstances and the rules of the game. At this point the choice between survive and thrive… really comes down to what is my commitment? Sure, I could collapse into a survival mechanism and hide on the couch and binge-watch everything on Netflix and HBO but that’s not what I am committed to. I want to be able to look back and say I did everything I could to stick to my commitment to Thriving in 2020, regardless of the circumstances. This year is looking like a forced lesson in creativity by necessity. Just how creative can we be to follow through on our commitments? I don’t have it all figured out; what this year will look like or what exactly I will do. What I feel we can continue to do; is courageously follow our intuition every day, act on our intuition and be extremely clear with what is in alignment with our goals and intentions.
With that all said… I am curious; what are you committed to this year regardless of circumstances? Who are you going to be in the face of this pandemic? Do you want to thrive or just survive? How creative are you?