What 2020 taught us
With just a few weeks left of 2020, we’re probably all doing that thing of wondering how the year went by so quickly. Special reasons for this year, clearly, and I won’t rehash the obvious.
Most of us probably want to forget most of it as it was such an unsettling combination of existential stress and total monotony. Not my favourite cocktail that’s for sure. Saying that, a coach’s job is always to look a bit deeper for the silver lining, the learning, the “growth opportunity”. I take my job seriously so am going to try to do just that. Even if at the end of it we still just decide that 2020 pretty much sucked.
We’ve all had an extended lesson in the ancient Greek theory of the dichotomy of control: “Some things are within our power, while others are not” wrote Epictetus, the Greek Stoic. So much of what we hear these days through positive affirmations, motivational speaking, Instagram etc is that we can do and be anything we want to be - limited only by our imagination. In some cases (hello Covid) this simply isn’t true. Reality can be a bummer.
In his regular piece for The Guardian ‘This column will change your life’ Oliver Burkeman says “the special trouble with uncertainty is that it’s a doorway to infinity. When you’ve no idea what tomorrow will bring... it’s possible to imagine things getting limitlessly bad.” When the world feels completely out of control, the only thing we can do is make sure we hold on to the things we can control. Accepting the limitations of the world around you can actually be an incredible relief. Ok maybe you personally can’t stop a pandemic spreading around the world, but you have enough agency to make sure you’re not spreading it yourself. Similarly, you may not be able to leave the house but you can make sure that the people who need to stay in touch with you know where to find you and that you’re just at the end of the phone.
Lisa Marchiano, a US based therapist and writer, recommends working “to tolerate uncertainty, rather than having to make it go away… Of course, that may be very difficult – but it can get us out of this place where we’re spinning our wheels, trying to fix something it isn’t within our power to fix.” There are certain situations where you can’t not be anxious; accepting this anxiety rather than constantly fighting to make it go away frees up an awful lot of energy to get on with things - you’re not spending half your time feeling anxious about feeling anxious. You can only think about so much so the more you concentrate on what you can do, the less remains available for focusing on what you can’t. By keeping your mind on what you can do, you’ll find that you can carry on with some semblance of work/life normality because doing normal things within your control means that you’re at least doing something - rather than the paralysis that comes with fixating on what you can’t do. It might be small wins to begin with, but keeping up with the small wins means you’ll eventually find a big win on your hands.
I also think that working on incremental changes rather than one giant leap to enlightenment removes the pressure of having to be perfect.
On some level we’re all trying to be the ‘finished article’ - the consummate adult who has family, work, fitness, hobbies and finances all just so. But to me the ‘finished article’ implies something unchanging and static and maybe, rather boring. If we’re always working towards something a little bit different or better, then we’re constantly changing (even if only by degrees). Surely someone in a constant state of growth is far more interesting than someone perfect and completely unchanging?? It’s a rhetorical question because to me a life of imperfection and interest wins every time.
Doing a little something everyday is something you can aim at wholeheartedly, knowing it’s doable by you alone and that it doesn’t need the cooperation of forces utterly outside of your control.
2020 has taught us innumerable things about our abusive relationship to nature, our physical frailty when the world really has something to say, the lack of resilience in our supply chains, the speed at which medical science can move provided we throw enough money at the problem, how women might do a rather better of job of governing than men (?? controversial?).
These are meta-issues that humanity as a whole has to face. We all have a part to play but on a very micro-personal level 2020 has taught me that doing small things well whilst everything else seems to be going bonkers, is the best way to stay sane.
I would love to hear what 2020 has taught you. Whether it’s on a grand scale or something relevant only to you, drop me a line and let me know.
