One Year Later – Reflecting Together on the Pandemic

The exact date will differ for everyone who reads this, but we’re each coming up on the anniversary of that day last year where we realized that COVID-19 was going to impact our lives in dramatic ways. For most of us, we didn’t understand at the time what that impact was genuinely going to feel like or how many things would change, but we all had that moment where it hit us – things were going to be different for a while. Personally and professionally, everything changed in what seemed like an instant. Now, a year later, it seems like a good time to reflect back a bit. Here are three questions to ask yourself…

Over the past year, what changes have we made that I would like to keep moving forward? Another way to ask this – how did we grow in the past year? The answer to this is going to be different for everyone. We’ve seen clients make drastic pivots to stay afloat, and we’ve watched some turn the negatives into positive opportunities. We’ve seen business models change radically and witnessed how and where we work being transformed, literally overnight in some cases. We’ve been part of new businesses boldly launching in the middle of all the chaos. Through it all, no matter which side you landed on, we’ve all added resilience to our resumes. That’s one thing we will take with us into the future… the knowledge that we are strong when adversity comes our way. We hope you have felt that as well. With that in mind, where have you grown the most over the past year?

Looking back on the past year, what did we take for granted pre-COVID that we want to get back? In other words, what do you miss the most? For many of you that we’ve talked to, one of the most common answers we hear every day is that people miss the relationship side of doing business. They miss being around people, whether that means their teams or their customers and clients. If your business mindset is more relational than transactional, you get this. Looking out in the future, rebuilding those personal connections will feel amazing. Getting back into our offices, grabbing coffee and lunch, sitting around conference room tables to collaborate with each other, and seeing each other’s smiles… we used to take those things for granted. Never again. With that in mind, what are you most excited to get back?

And finally, what pre-COVID things are we glad to let go of and leave behind? This can be a challenging question to answer. So many of us are laser-focused on “getting back to normal.” But here’s the deal… Maybe not everything about the old normal was so awesome? Maybe there were some things about “normal” that were just status quo patterns we had let slide out of convenience? In conversations with some of you, the amount of time you’ve spent traveling for business has decreased – you’ve discovered you didn’t love being a road warrior in the first place. Sometimes, being forced out of our comfort zones is the best way to see that we were never comfortable in the first place – we just didn’t know any better. With that in mind, what are you excited to let go of?

It’s been one heckuva year… We are thankful that each of you who are reading this have been part of it. That’s been the biggest lesson learned for us as we’re writing this today. We’ve come to understand what a blessing it is to have a tribe of people around us who are positive, upbeat, and focused on making the world just a little better every day. Without each other, this year would have been a dumpster fire. Together, we’ve gotten through, and we’re all going to come out on the other side stronger.

Call-to-Action

Looking back on the last year, start a list of things you’re grateful for. Maybe it begins as two or three. Keep adding to it over the course of this week and next. Soon it will be ten things you’re grateful for, then twenty. Enjoy the process of creating your list. Then, if there are people on your list that have helped you navigate this past year, reach out and tell them thank you.

Ready for more?
OrangeBall Insights has always been a place to share ideas, explore our purpose and leadership, and chat a little bit about marketing. If this resonated and you’d like to receive weekly ways to bounce higher every day, subscribe here.