Moving Forward With Confidence

Someone said to me recently - you can only move forward, you can’t go back and you can’t stand still, because if you do, you’ll only be swept up with events. So forward it is!

We were all looking forward to the end of lockdown and now, on the whole, here it is. But life has changed for many of us.

Practically, the chances are that our routines are different; we may have had to change job, drawn on different talents, adapted and pivoted in order to earn a living. Or maybe we’ve been furloughed and we’re going back to the more or less the same role. We’re able to visit family again, go to the pub, eat out, go to meetings instead of look at someone on the other side of a computer screen (how tiring was that!), see people who we haven’t seen for over a year. HUG!

Emotionally - I’ve seen extroverts who have been afraid to leave the house, people have learned to distrust others, tempers have been on a short fuse, we’ve been living in fear. On one hand, we’ve been told to keep away from others and that there is a potentially lethal virus circulating, and on the other hand we’ve been told that we’re safe. No wonder we’re confused and frightened.

Physically - well I don’t know about you but I thought that here was an opportunity to exercise, do yoga, eat healthily and most of all swim and meditate. Yeah Ok. More like drink lots of wine, watch Netflix and eat even more crisps and chocolate. Opportunity wasted. Comfort eating won the day!

So here we are, emerging, blinking, into the sunshine (well we hope so if the Indian variant doesn’t spoil our plans). Several generations of people affected both physically and mentally by a year that we will never get back. It’s going to take a while to rebuild confidence in ourselves and each other.

Kindness and patience is needed in buckets.