These have certainly been trying times, to say the least. There are so many people out there who have been reacting to everything COVID-19 related. You have businesses that shut their doors, laying people off, putting a complete freeze on all hiring. You have people who were following instructions and completely quarantining themselves, to the best of their abilities. And then you had others who, despite warnings, were going off and continuing to try to get together with their friends and family. There has been a lot of fear out there, not knowing where the money will come from for groceries or bills, not knowing when you’ll be going back to work, worrying over friends and family, especially if they’ve tested positive to the virus. These are all “reactions” to what you’ve been facing, the unknown, and it comes from a place of fear and uncertainty.
And then you have the other side of the coin. These are the people who are living in the here and now. You have your doctors and nurses on the front lines, you have your essential workers in grocery stores, you have your truck drivers making sure deliveries of everything from food to toilet paper are hitting the shelves, and you have your businesses (small and large) that are still operating, maybe remotely or a little differently than they did before, but they’re still operating. Our company, for example, has continued to move forward with our business since we were already remote, innovative, technology driven, and hyper efficient. I don’t think many people realize that none of us have time for fear, we don’t have time for reacting, and we certainly don’t have all this “extra” time on our hands sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why? What makes all of us so different?
It all boils down to choice. Even though so many feel their choices have been taken from them during this pandemic, it’s still a choice. A choice to take a proactive approach to living vs. a negative approach and reacting. With all things that happen to us, we can choose to act or we can choose to react. When you choose to act, you are making a conscious decision, you are thinking things through. When you react, you are doing so emotionally, your judgement may be clouded, and you will find that you’re all over the place with your thinking and feeling. You’re probably also wishing things would just “go back to normal”. I hate to tell you this, but you’re all going to have to re-define normal. As again, you’ll have some hard choices to make when that time comes, and you can again react and try to get things to go back to the way they were pre-virus, or you can live in the moment, go with the flow, and know that you’ll have a “new” normal once the smoke clears.
Successful businesses know how to pivot and take advantage of slow times to identify new opportunities or make offers to their current and future customers to help them see through challenges. We, like so many small businesses, are putting our team and employees first, even before the owners paychecks and the idea of profits are long forgotten for the time being. We choose not to slow down, every day, every hour, because we know that will make the transition into the new normal that much more successful. On our team- this is about choosing so much more than just survival, but identifying opportunities to thrive, no matter how tough it is in the moment.