A Moment of Pause on Memorial Day

It’s Memorial day here in the United States. Hope that you are enjoying some sort of barbecue or cookout as most people do for the holiday. I don’t know if you remember, but last year on Memorial day 2020, we released an episode called All Together Now.

To summarize it very quickly for you, we were wondering how we might use the time of being locked down to our advantage. What priorities might we change and how might we come out of this pandemic as stronger, wiser, more courageous versions of ourselves. I used the metaphor of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly to symbolize emerging from the messy broken apart time that we found ourselves in. I said maybe if we can pause long enough to figure out what we truly value, we won’t go back to that same world, but instead we’ll go back to a world where our priorities are aligned with those values. And we emerge looking more like a butterfly and less like the same caterpillar that went into that shell.

I don’t know if that was brilliant, naive, or maybe something entirely different, but now, as of this moment on Memorial day 2021, it appears that most places around the United States are emerging from their metaphorical little cocoons.

A Moment of Pause

For a variety of reasons, vaccines being one of them, life is getting back to the way it used to be. Well, hopefully not exactly back to the way it used to be. See, that’s what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. What world are we going to be entering into? And more importantly, what have we learned from this strange time?

I’ve also been wondering how many of you listeners paused long enough over the past year to figure out what you truly value? To understand your fears and motivations, priorities, and have established some new definition of success in whatever position or spheres of influence you hold.

To be honest, I don’t really have an answer to my own questions about values and priorities. But what I can tell you is that there are a lot of things I thought were really important a year ago that honestly aren’t even on my radar anymore. And I guess all I’m really doing here in this little in-between episode is asking you to take a few minutes, just a few moments out of your day, to think about those things as well.

For months now, we kept using language like “if we ever get through this,” “when,” “someday,” “hopefully,” “when will that be,” “we’ll get through this,” because it just felt like the pandemic would never end, it was going on and on and on. But now, well, the end seems to be getting closer. It seems like it’s in our sights. And honestly, we don’t have a ton of time left to figure these things out. If we’re not careful, we’re just going to get swept back up into the same old routines, the same old patterns and habits, and old ways of doing things from before.

So I ask you again, can we all pause long enough to figure out what we truly value? So we don’t go back to the same old world, but instead, we go back to a world where our priorities are aligned with the things that we value most. And we emerge looking more like a beautiful butterfly and less like that same slimy caterpillar that went into that shell.

Your Reflections

We would love to hear some of your reflections on the past year, what values and priorities have you discovered? How does this impact your leadership and your positions of influence in whatever sphere, whatever context that may be, and what changes are you making as a result of it? Connect with me at nathan@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.