The Coro-19 virus is horrible but on a positive note it has made us take a moment and pause, something most of us probably would never have done. Not by choice, bam the treadmill we’ve been on for decades just stopped. Bam!
They feeling you have right now is the same as if you’d been thrown off your Treadmill and onto the ground: What in the hell just happened?
Consider: What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but The Great Pause.
It is, in a word, profound. Please don’t recoil from the bright light beaming through the window. I know it hurts your eyes. It hurts mine, too. But the curtain is wide open.
What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped. Here it is. We’re in it. Stores are closed. Restaurants are empty. Streets and six-lane highways are barren. Even the planet itself is rattling less (true story).
And because it is rarer than rare, it has brought to light all of the beautiful and painful truths of how we live. And that feels weird. Really weird.
Because it has… never… happened… before. If we want to create a better country and a better world for our kids, and if we want to make sure we are even sustainable as a nation and as a democracy, we have to pay attention to how we feel right now.
I imagine you feel you are devastated, depressed, and heartbroken. Many people do.
Actually I’m the opposite. I’ve used this time to write, to explore, to research and to find a inner peace not found in years. I’ve used the time to get closer to those I care deeply about and we have done many projects together. I’ve taken this pause as an opportunity to grow emotionally, spiritually and work on my physical self as well as mental self.
Turn off the news. Connect with those limited people close by. Learn yourself! Love yourself. Take care of yourself. Reset your priorities and when the treadmill starts again don’t let it run you. You are now the master of it.
Slow your life to enjoy your life and you will be a better person for it. We as a nation and a world will be better for it.
Take the final few weeks of this pause and you yourself pause and enjoy the moment.
Pause, breath, relax, Enjoy the moment!
M. Chris Edwards
Executive Operations Coach & Author of 2 Hours Unplugged: Unplug & Reconnect available on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Chris-Edwards/e/B07RPCCCWC/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Chris Edwards Author, Mentor/Executive Coach & Political Consultant 