Finding Clarity in 2020 and Surviving its Challenges
2020 Vision
This year was heralded as being the year of “2020 vision”. It was supposed to be the year of seeing things clearly; a year that was going to be amazing! Unfortunately, some of what we are now seeing is far from what we had hoped to see. As a result, many of us are now dealing with overwhelm, frustration, fear and deep sadness.
While we traverse the current landscape of pandemics, racial violence and diminishing mental health, each of us is dealing with our own specific problems. These problems include financial difficulties, emotional struggles, breakdowns in relationships, and health struggles. Then there are also those who are not struggling but who feel guilty about not struggling!
Getting back to “normal life”
The world of personal development continues to remind us that challenges are a part of life and are what help us to learn, grow and become better versions of ourselves. The suggestion is that right now there are big, big, big opportunities for growth and change as we face off with these enormous world crises.
However, if we focus purely on the messaging and goals communicated by the “powers at be” - that we need to obey certain measures in order to get back to “normal life” - are we missing out on the lessons along the way?
For me, there are two big opportunities for growth as a society that we seem to be overlooking.
Learning how to be healthy and boost your immunity
This is the perfect time for the world’s leaders to step in and commit to educating and motivating people to change and improve their health. Thanks to the pandemic, we are now more than ever aware of how unhealthy as a society we have become. This awareness is accompanied by people being in so much fear that they are willing to stay home and wear masks. And even where there is no fear, there is a general willingness to act, take the advice and follow procedures in order to protect others.
People really change when they’re either scared or willing or both. Because people are currently either fearful and/or willing, we have this incredible opportunity for change. There is an abundance of research on how regular exercise, sunshine, healthy eating, meaningful friendships and low stress levels all dramatically impact our immune system. What an opportunity this is to start educating people on how they can eat better, sleep better, exercise and get sunshine!
While we work with the government on preventing the spread of COVID, I also urge you to think about the lifestyle changes that the combination of fear and willingness can propel and motivate you into. Maybe for years you’ve wanted to clean up your diet, commit to certain exercise or manage your stress better. If cleaning up your diet, exercising or managing your stress makes you feel safer so that you don’t have to worry about COVID, isn’t that motivation enough?
Taking control over your internal world
No matter what is going on in the outside world, we always have dominion and a certain degree of control over what is going on in our inside world. The world has always been chaotic – there have always been viruses, corruption, racial and social injustices, but up until now we’ve been able to not know about it. With this awareness, we have an opportunity to master our own emotions and control our state of mind so that we can survive the external chaos and achieve freedom from within.
This is the perfect time to take responsibility for the way your lifestyle, feelings and actions affect your internal world and to make the necessary changes on the inside. A lot of the unconscious wounding from our past that motivates so many of our patterns and behaviours also causes a lot of undesirable results in our external world.
It’s an incredible time to work on your emotional IQ to get to a deeper level of breaking through patterns and shifting behaviour so that you’re no longer making decisions and reacting to the world from the programming of your past. When you understand that freedom is a state of mind and that the secret to achieving it is in overcoming limitations in your mindset, you can create a breakthrough in any part of your life and survive its challenges.