Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

COVID-19

Making a Plan – When Making a Plan Feels Really Hard

By Leave a Comment

It’s so hard to make a plan when you don’t know what next week will bring.

Will you be in quarantine? Will someone you know – and rely on – be in quarantine?

Will you be sick? Will anyone you know be sick?

Will you be in lockdown?

Will your job end next week? Or, if you’ve already been dislocated, will you get a job next week?

I love a good plan. I mean, I built a whole business around helping people make plans, so I better love it.

But it is so very hard to be planful when there’s so much is unknowable.

There is something you can do, though. Know what I’m doing? How I’m coping?

I plan where I can and let go when I have to.

For instance.

I plan a weekly menu.

From the weekly menu, I plan my grocery store run.

I plan how to stock my pantry so I’ll have what I need in the event there’s another full lockdown.

I plan when I’ll wake up in the morning.

I plan when I’ll start work and when I’ll finish for the day.

I plan when to make calls to or socially-distanced visits with family and friends.

I schedule exercise.

I identify three things each day that I know I can accomplish, and I put a very large and satisfying check mark next to them when they’re done.

[For those readers in America, let me just mention that I’m also planning to vote. In person, early. And I urge you to create your own voting plan, too.]

If I worked in an office, I’d plan for performance reviews to be done when performance reviews are always done, and I’d plan on hiring if hiring needed to be done, and I’d plan the annual conference, too, maybe using a nifty virtual platform.

What I’m not doing is: I’m not planning post-pandemic travel. Or Thanksgiving or Christmas for that matter because there are still too many variables to be able to make a plan that will stick.

I’m also not planning that this thing will be over by a date certain because who knows when it will be over.

All I can plan for is that there will be a lot of things I can’t plan for in the next six or eight months. 

I am, though, going to focus on being resilient, and adaptable, and kind to myself and others as the coming days unfold. What an accomplishment that will be!

Sounds an awful lot like a plan, doesn’t it?

 

A Pandemic Is Not A Snowstorm

By Leave a Comment

Those middle-of-the-night epiphanies? If you can remember them – which is always a big “if” – they often don’t have the same resonance in the daylight that they carried in the wee small hours of the night.

Last night I had a clarity awakening and this morning – surprise of surprises – it still felt true.

I realized that I have been treating this pandemic like it’s a blizzard. I’ve been enduring and waiting.

You know, like you spend time wondering and betting how many inches or feet you’re going to get. You wait for the snowfall to slow down so you can shovel the sidewalks. You wait for the snowplows to get to your street. You bake brownies and cookies and cakes, thinking that you’re living time out of time so none of the indulgences will actually count.

But this pandemic is not like a blizzard. Not at all.

Enduring and waiting has only made me frustrated, anxious and mad.

No, what’s happening now is a total shift in the way I live today and will live for the foreseeable future. A client who works in a big company says they are planning to have to deal with this virus and its impact at least until June, 2021.

June. 2021.

So what I need to do for myself is wrap my arms around the is-ness of this new life.

Which means I need to embrace the necessity of exercising at home, and the non-negotiable need I have to take a brisk walk every day.

I need to eat smaller portions because I’m using fewer calories.

I need to drink less alcohol because as I mentioned *calories* and if you don’t really know what day it is, how can you keep track of how many glasses of wine you’ve had?

Taking care with my schedule is even more important because it creates guideposts for the day.

If I can create something everyday – intentional creativity – I will grow an important part of my brain.

Connecting with family and friends routinely rather than happenstance-ly will ease my loneliness.

Prioritizing my rest, keeping my environment tidy, dressing the way I want to dress that day (and showering, let’s not forget that) are things I can do to ensure a good quality of life.

And, helping others is a thing I will always do. If I’m running to CVS to pick up a prescription or to the grocery store every other week, you know I’ll be reaching out to neighbors to see if they need something.

My new normal is markedly different from my very-recent normal in that I’m no longer enduring, no longer waiting.

I’m living. I’m improving. I’m learning. I’m growing. I’m helping.

All within a container that is safe for me, and safe for you, and safe for all of us.

Hell of an epiphany, huh?