It’s been a tough year in Victoria, Australia. I know, you’re thinking, it’s been a tough year everywhere. However, while your lives have returned to some sort of normality, we’re still living in the unknown of what will come next. Our lives have been shattered. We have pretty much been locked up since March. The scars are running deep. Everyone I have spoken to has been deeply affected in some way. Our lives are not the same. Our dreams and goals have been put on hold. Our motivations are struggling to keep us going. Nothing is the same.
It will not magically be better when we can travel more than 5kms from our homes. It will not magically be better when we can go shopping. It will not be magically better when we can be with our friends and families again.
It is going to take a lot of work to rebuild our lives, our relationships, our tribes and communities. It is going to be more important than ever, to reconnect and feel that we have support from each other. However, that is going to be so hard. We have been fed fear and uncertainty from every corner. While we will embrace being together again, when we can, there is going to be an underlying feeling of “is it safe”.
Many people won’t return to their communities, to their tribes. Their connections have been severed, severely. Not by any fault of their own or of the community. We have worked hard to keep things going, but we are all feeling the strain. It is difficult to continue the full support that is needed, when everyone is going through their personal struggles. I am reminded of “put your oxygen mask on first”.
As a leader, you can see how decimated your community or business is. You can see and feel the strains and struggles or people around you. Within your own trials and tribulations of this time, your heart is breaking for those who have entrusted you to be their leader. You question how will we get through? What will be left over? How will we rebuild?
This is not a time of going back. We can’t. Things have changed. We have changed. We can’t return to “normal.” It is not about rebuilding. It is not about patching up the broken pieces and sticking them back together again.
Now, more than ever, we need to start looking at new ways of building resilient and self-sustaining communities. We need to look to new visions of the way that we can be together and grow together. New visions of who we can become, what we can achieve and how we do it. New visions of what it means to be in community.
We need to forge ahead and create new paths, new opportunities, new innovations. It is time for us to build relationships and allow them to spark in us something greater. To bring forth new visions, unified visions that draw people in. That give people the freedom to see, to feel, to explore. To connect with their deepest desire and work with others to bring it into fruition.
Now is the time. Dream big. Dream hard. Dream unified. Together we can create the future.
If this message resonates with you, I invite you to connect with me and to take the opportunity to have a conversation.Andrea Putting is a Speaker, Author with a passion for unified visioning to co-create the future. To connect with Andrea please visit her profile