Alllllllllright Dear Readers, you are determined to fight for your dreams. You have done the work to regain confidence in yourself and now believe wholeheartedly in your abilities. Furthermore, you have unearthed what it takes to help your mind stay focused on the task at hand even when the world, as you know it, has become unrecognizable. And yet, you are unable to find the strength to move forward and stay productive. Your performance at work suffers for the first time ever. Your personal life is in shamble as COVID-19 has unleashed a torrent of setbacks that have disrupted how your family operates. Here we are now dealing with an unconventional back to school season, and you feel more defeated than ever. Is there anything that you can do to end 2020 on a positive note?
Fear not, Dear Readers! The JMS team is back with valuable insights that will inspire you to be fearless in the pursuit of your dreams. If it’s your first time here, Dear Readers welcome, and thanks for stopping by the JMS blog. FYI, JMS is a consulting firm located in Philadelphia that advises people and organizations on how to manage crises with efficiency and expediency. To that end, the JMS team is in the business of designing recovery plans as robust as possible that avoid behavioral and financial paralysis. Therefore, Dear Readers, this blog will help you make sense of these unprecedented times without feeling devoid of motivation and utterly defeated. You got this, Dear Readers, and don’t you ever forget it!
As discussed at length here on the blog and everywhere else on the internet, the impact of the coronavirus global pandemic has been extremely disruptive to our way of life. As we attempt to work through these unprecedented times, many hard-working Americans are struggling to make sense of it all. Meet Lisa, a ten-year executive who works for a Fortune 500 company here in Philadelphia, who called the JMS team because she felt that her personal and professional lives were spiraling out of control.
Like many Americans, Lisa’s company forced her to work from home in March when President Trump issued two national emergency declarations under both the Stafford Act and the National Emergencies Act (NEA) on March 13th, 2020. At the time, she thought that this temporary measure would last exactly two weeks. In her mind, she had even decided that life would return to normal by April 6th, right on time to celebrate Easter. As you know too well, Dear Readers, none of that was possible. Weeks and months passed, and life is far from being normal!
Like so many of us, she has had her fair share of coronavirus induced obstacles to overcome. Indeed, there were children with new online learning metrics to grasp with haste and adjust to a newly unemployed husband who lost his job as COVID-19 mercilessly shattered his industry. At work, rumors of layoffs ramped up as an abysmal Q2 report informed the leadership that deep cuts had to be on the table if only to survive 2020. To compound it all, Lisa received a negative performance for the first time in her life at the mid-year review. As a self-proclaim high achiever, you can imagine, Dear Readers, just how devastating this untimely misstep would be to her confidence and outlook on life.
In July, she came to the JMS team because she was at her wit’s end and was scared that she could lose her job in this pandemic! She couldn’t fathom why all the tricks and reflexes she used thus far in her career were failing her so spectacularly now. Simply put, the coronavirus shattered Lisa’s spirit, and she could not deal with the whimpering person she had become.
For all these reasons, Dear Readers, this blog insists that your job will never define who you are!
Therefore, Dear Readers, beating yourself up over a poor performance review is not necessary since it is not an accurate representation of the kind of person you are! At best, a bad evaluation only paints the picture of a momentary setback or a blimp in an otherwise promising long career. Thus, Dear Readers, it is pointless to keep harping over and over something that cannot be changed. Furthermore, beating yourself up, resenting the reality that you feel like crap, or carrying the weight of a fear-induced debilitating paralysis are all bad habits that not only cloud your mind but also block the flow of productivity needed to keep on living. In short, this amounts to nothing more than a vicious cycle that vacillates between self-loathing and low self-esteem. Indeed, as your mind begins to unravel and the pressure of the crisis of epic proportion or Big Bad Wolf (BBW) becomes too great to bear, the number one priority to get a handle of your life before you crash and burn is to aim to find balance.
Consequently, to help Lisa find a new sense of normalcy given the tremendous familial distress she was under, the JMS team focused on shifting her mindset away from resistance.
For Lisa to successfully make such a mindset shift, she needed to be honest with herself and be willing to do the challenging work of introspection. With the JMS framework, she was able to review her actions and consented that she did earn that poor performance review. Indeed, by taking two steps back, Lisa realized that her initial resistance to embracing the work from home model sabotaged her leadership at work as well as the well-being of her family.
She never anticipated, through no fault of her own since she never faced a global pandemic in her lifetime, that everyone in her life would become a lot more dependent on her strength. She did not have a game plan to manage her team more effectively remotely and address her children’s changing scope of learning as they moved to remote online education for the first time in their young lives. Do you see, Dear Readers, that the realm of productivity reaches far beyond professional endeavors? For Lisa, productivity was a matter of life or death as she stood to lose everything that she holds near and dear to her heart. In essence, productivity is the key to having a purposeful life! Without it, life is pretty meaningless! So, what is next?
How can you, Dear Readers, get back your life on track if you share a predicament similar to that of Lisa’s?
Aim to cultivate resilience instead.
As you’ve taken two steps back and shifted away from resistance, Dear Readers, it becomes clear that there is no other option but to build resilience if only to remain a functional human being. That’s because when you feel that the world has fallen apart or that you have hit rock bottom, the only way to survive is to let go of everything and free your mind of any toxic thoughts. In doing so, Dear Readers, you are no longer weighed down by regrets and resentment. Better yet, as you feel as light as a feather, you can adapt to changing circumstances with a lot more ease.
By the end of August, although Lisa had received multiple revisions of back to school scenarios and office re-entry protocols, she was able to be a lot flexible as she concentrated on leading her team and family with a newfound sense of empathy. Today, as we move into the last of Q3, her team has made great strides toward regaining the momentum lost in Q2. And her children have finally figured out what they needed to make remote learning more enjoyable and have opted to complete middle as well as high school requirements online as homeschoolers under the strict supervision of Lisa’s husband. All in all, Dear Readers, cultivating resilience is getting into the habit of seeing how fortunate you are, no matter how dire you think your situation is at the moment. Once you cultivate resilience, you develop the aptitude to recover from anything and become the most trusted asset to any team.
There you have it, Dear Readers! If you are ready to get your mojo back, join us later this week for the last installment of the JMS Summer Productivity Series to help you find your way out of coronavirus-related setbacks. Say goodbye to anxiety and hello to everything you have ever wanted out of life. Let’s be successful together, shall we?
Drop us a line in the comment section below or at jms@branding24seven.com to let us know if you agree with us. The JMS team loves to get mail, so don’t be shy, and feel free to send your letters at 21 S. 11th street 2nd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107.
As always, we thank you for taking the time to read this publication. If it has left you inspired to chase the life of your dreams, please share it with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances!
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