Welcome back to another week of the origination point podcast! This week, Bill dives into what is going on in the world and how it is affecting everyone. Bill touches upon the coronavirus and how the current pandemic has affected his life. Don’t forget to like and subscribe and share with our friends! Stay safe and stay healthy.

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Origination Point Podcast

Hope and Healing

We are starting a new series called Hope and Healing, talking about how to move through what has become an unpredictable life. If you are like me, you have been spending a lot of time at home doing social distancing. I live in Oregon, where the governor has created a statewide stay-at-home perspective, which means we can only go out for shopping, walks, and hikes as long as we practice social distancing. It means no more than 6 feet from each other and cannot congregate in groups larger than ten. For many of us out there, it means that our work life has been disrupted.

I do inclusion and belonging consulting as a facilitator. Most of my work is with groups of people. All of my clients have put off and postponed the work that we were doing together. That means that I have no income. As I think about the work that I do, it makes me realize that I have to use all of the strategies and skills that I work with other people in terms of thinking, “How do I stay positive? How do I create a new life that enables me to be engaged and positive and continue to thrive in a time of unpredictability?”

That is not always easy because I have emotions and feelings. I was depressed for a couple of days. I sat around binge-watching TV and eating and not even taking a shower for a couple of days. I woke up and thought, “I got to move through this. I can’t ignore it. I can’t act like it is not happening.” I came upon a quote from Maya Angelou that says, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” I can clearly say that I don’t like what’s happening. I don’t like being forced into behaviors and into ways of being that are not by my personal choice and being told to shelter at home and don’t go out or risk either getting the virus or spreading the virus. It means I have to disrupt my whole routine.

Through this Hope and Healing series of episodes, we are going to talk about the impact of social distancing and normal. What is that all about? What does that look like? How do we create a new normal? I’m also going to give you some tips, skills, and practices to support you in growing through this and feeling your emotions rather than suppressing them and owning them in a way that allows you to be more expressive, especially in having a conversation with other people.

I realize that for some people, you are sheltering in your house with people you like and get along with. Some people are sheltered in an environment where they may be with people they are estranged from or don’t like. We have to figure out how to work through both of those situations and not take our anxiety and frustration out on each other. We are going to start to dive into some of these topics and the idea of normal because I have heard a lot of people talk about normal, “Let’s get back to normal.”

I have been listening to podcasts by Eckhart Tolle. He was talking about normal as being the individual rituals, patterns, and things we do every day that creates our normal. For every person, normal looks different because we all have different rituals, routines, and patterns. It made me think about the individual versus the collective normal. Is there such a thing as a collective normal if it is based on individual patterns of behavior?

I was talking to a friend of mine. We had some work planned. Most of my work is with groups. Everything had to be canceled. We were talking about this whole idea of normal. I was sharing what I heard, which I shared around it being individual routines and patterns. He said, “I love my patterns of behavior. I love my routines and rituals.” He was having to also shelter in his house. It was missing all of those things that, to him, are normal. Anyone who is reading this, your entire view of normal has been disrupted.

Collective Normal

I started thinking, “What is a collective normal?” A lot of what I have heard is, “Let’s go back to where we were.” When I think of where we were, I will think of our country. In America, we lived in a country that was politically divided. We are divided based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. We had an environment where people could say anything they wanted without any accountability. Even our top-level leaders were referring to this pandemic as the China flu and have only stopped using that language.

Normal is also about an environment where people have needs that aren’t being met, where to some degree, we have already been doing social distancing because we don’t talk to each other a lot and we don’t mix with people outside of our groups, however, that is defined. When I think about going back to normal, I also think about our whole educational system that is not designed to educate the diversity of the students. I think about teachers who aren’t paid enough to do their jobs and live in the communities where they work. I think of a healthcare system that is not able to meet not only the needs of the community, it also is not meeting the needs of our practitioners in terms of their ability to do their jobs effectively.

I could go on about the division between biases in healthcare, policing, and politics. This collective normal is not necessarily something I want to go back to. Something that we all need to think about is what is your role in either supporting or breaking down some of these divisions and inequities that benefit some to the detriment of others because that was what I was experiencing as normal.

 

Another thing I want to talk about is this whole idea of change and how quickly things can change. I want to share a story that I have to go back a number of years to when I served on the school board. I had the experience where parents would come in and need something for their children. They would come and tell me that they called someone in the district, “It has been a few weeks. No one has gotten back to me and helped me with my issue. My child still needs this. I still need to talk to someone about this particular topic.”

There was a time when my child had an issue with a teacher that I didn’t think was effective. I called down to the district. Someone called me back that day. Several days later, the problem was fixed. The teacher that my child was in front of my child got moved out of that class. As I began to do a little more research, I found that this particular person had been moved around to 3 or 4 different schools in the district because they were ineffective, and nobody wanted them to be teaching in their building.

It made me realize that, in a lot of ways, the ways we get things done are by whom we know. It was in the best interest of the people who were working, as a school board member, everyone in the district was working on behalf of the superintendent and the board. It was in their best interest to keep me happy. Things changed quickly.

It made me realize that if every parent wasn’t being treated that way, that would be a huge problem. When I look at this pandemic and see the things that are changing, the way that businesses are stepping up and supporting, making masks or ventilators, the way we are facilitating this change in the political structure to support people who are out of jobs.

The way educational systems are flexing to be able to provide students with one-on-one devices so that they can do some level of learning at home. The way the businesses are flexing to do business meetings virtually and to have all of their employees engaged and involved makes me realize that we do have the ability to shift. The challenge of a crisis mentality is, “Let’s all come, work, and support each other. Let’s get through the crisis, and the crisis ends. Everything goes back to normal.”

Normal was already not great. That is why I say, “I would love to see something different after we have gone through this time in our world. If we don’t, we are missing out on this great opportunity.” Business as usual isn’t going to be the same because, for people who have been laid off from their jobs and who can’t pay their bills, it is going to take months for them to recover. Some businesses will never be able to recover. Even being out of business for two weeks is a hardship for a lot of people.

It would be great to see something different after we have gone through this pandemic. If we don't, we are missing out on this great opportunity. Share on X

What do you do if you have been an entrepreneur, and you put your heart and soul into your business, and now something out of your control has disrupted your ability to have the lifestyle that you chose for yourself, your family, and your well-being, so this crisis-oriented mentality doesn’t last? It is a mindset because we have to support each other. I see it in my community where people are offering each other toilet paper, paper towels, food, running errands for each other, even holding each other accountable to social distancing, and these folks who are having large gatherings.

On the other side, I see people who are completely flaunting all of that and still holding large gatherings or not caring about the Coronavirus and saying, “My life is more important than worrying about a virus and worrying about where I’m going to take it.” We have this dichotomy between the individualist nature of our American culture versus the collectivist idealism that we have to live in to get through a crisis. I want everyone to think about that. In your crisis-oriented perspective, when this all comes to an end, are we going to drop right back into individualism and all about me? Are we going to think as much about our neighbors several months from now as we do now, thinking about caring for each other?

Hope and Healing are being aware of these things that are happening and the personal toll that it is taking. It is also creating hope and doing some things to make sure that we are healing our own selves and feelings so that we can maintain our own functionality. The idea is saying, “I have these feelings.” A couple of days ago, I was feeling depressed. I told my wife and my kids I was sad and depressed. I sat in it. It didn’t feel good and wasn’t fun. I was unmotivated. I sat around binge-watching Netflix and eating. I knew I couldn’t do that every day, or I would devolve into something not appealing to me. The next day, I got up and did a workout at my house. I went for a walk, got some fresh air, came back, and started to think about, “What do I need to do next?”

Importance of Our Mindset

What I want to offer you is the importance of your mindset. Our mindset creates these narratives that drive our behaviors. A lot of times, we want to change our behaviors. Me changing my behavior would be to say something like, “No, I’m not depressed and sad.” I get up and do something. Smile, have fun, and not worry about it. What I chose to do was to sit in it because part of the change process that is the most challenging is the emotional aspect of it.

 

When we get into a change process, we have a place where we are. Where we are is, “We have this pandemic. It is affecting the whole planet. It was a matter of time before it started and infiltrated our country.” Where we are going is we want to get back to normal, we need to get the economy back on track, or we need to get people back into their jobs. It is almost like this straight line from where we are to where we want to be. What we forget is that it is more what we would call the operational or structural process of change. We missed the transitional piece of the personal and emotional process.

This is the same for everybody in terms of process. When all of this happened, people started being told all around the country, “You had to shelter in place. You had to stay home.” For most of us, including myself, I went into shock and denial. I sat in anger and resistance. I still go in between both of those. The way the pattern goes is we start in shock and denial. We go into anger and resistance. We get into growing acceptance, and we start to have this idea of focused commitment, which we start to think about where we are going.

Many people in this country and this world are still in shock, denial, anger, and resistance. They go back and forth through one of those on a daily basis including myself. I continue to slip more into growing acceptance, which allows me to start to do some of the things that I’m sharing with you. This idea of change and transition is what is happening here. What happens is a change comes, and there is an action or a choice. Sometimes it is our own. Sometimes it is what we are experiencing where it was put upon us. We go through this transition process which creates stress. From that stress, it creates results.

Change is a form of loss.

The idea is, how do we lower the level of stress so the results aren’t as harsh as they could be? Change is a form of loss. It is a loss of security, identity, direction, relationship, and belonging. What we are all going through is we are going through change, and it is a form of loss. Whenever we lose something, there is a grieving process that we have to go through. You can’t miss any steps of that grieving process because they are all important.

 

When you think about it from that perspective, there is this piece that is called the end. We are in the end zone right now, and the end is lost. We have lost our independence, ability to congregate, and a lot of things from this. When we are in the form of loss, it creates stress, physical symptoms, sweating, sleep loss, anxiety, emotional distress, lowered productivity, tiredness, distraction, and reduced self-esteem. What we all know is that stress kills.

What are some of the exercises or things you can do for yourself to lower your level of stress and come gradually more to some level of this is our new normal now? While you will slip into shock, denial, anger, and resistance, some days, you might start to grow into acceptance. When I talk to one of my kids, and they don’t know about their job or whether they will have a job, I go back into anger and resistance or denial. I have to think about if I’m going to support someone and myself, how do I stay at some level of acceptance?

The next part of this piece is the idea of what is called the neutral zone and the neutral zone is the place of possibility. I don’t know if we are in the neutral zone because this has been going on here for a couple of weeks. The other piece I don’t want to do is force myself through this process because if I push through and miss a step, I’m going to have to come back and redo it. We are still in this place of loss and ending. The next place is a possibility and that is where this neutral zone is. As we go through possibilities, we start to gain some control over what is happening. We get into this idea of beginnings, creating some new actions and steps.

What I’m attempting to share with everyone out there is that where you are is part of the process. The important thing to do is to have a dialogue with whomever it is that you are with, have a dialogue with people that you care about, and start to talk about where you are in this process. Are you in shock, denial, anger, or resistance?

The most important thing is not to take it out on each other because we are all in this together. We could get things started, and people could go back to work. We could still be passing on this virus and it continues to exacerbate the situation. The way that we think about it and the narratives that we have in our heads do control the behaviors that we have.

The only thing I have is how I move through this process because I can’t change it. I can’t go back and say, “It would be great if we didn’t have a pandemic that is affecting the whole world and influencing now what I can and cannot do, not so much by choice. I have come to accept that if I do these things, I will not get sick, or I won’t make other people sick.” That still wasn’t my choice several weeks ago to lose my work, to sit at home, and to go back and forth through these deep emotional pendulum swings.

The Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence

I’m going to offer you this exercise to think about in terms of what is happening. I will reference something that I pulled off from Facebook. It is an exercise I have been doing for years, but somebody related it to where we are now. It is called the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. The Circle of Concern is the big thing we have going on in our life. When you think about the Circle of Concern, these are things that we do not have a lot of control over. A concern would be, “We are in a pandemic, and that keeps me up at night. That affects what I do during the day.” When we think about the Circle of Influence, it is thinking about, “What is it that I can do?” I can stay home, exercise at home, and stay connected to my friends and family via video, podcast, and texting.

 

I want to share some of the things on this Facebook post that was some of the Circle of Concern. These are some things that came up as a Circle of Concern. If others follow the rule of social distancing, the actions of others predict what will happen, other people’s motives, how others react, and how long it lasts, the amount of toilet paper at the store. That is a whole other conversation about how we go out and buy up everything. Don’t think about the person behind us, which is what I mean about normal and crisis-oriented. Even within a crisis, our first thought is, “What do I need to take care of myself? What do I need to take care of my family?” This isn’t wrong.

This isn’t about right or wrong. It is thinking, “If I do that to the extreme, how does that affect the next person? My own children have run out of toilet paper, and I couldn’t find any. I mailed them some. I never thought I would be mailing toilet paper to my kids because they couldn’t find any in the stores.” Those are the things I can’t control that are huge concerns that are not going to go away no matter what I do.

My influences are things that I can do to influence this. I can have a positive attitude. I can follow the recommendations of the doctors and the mayor and do the things they asked me to do. I can do social distancing. I can turn off the news. One day I sat and watched the news almost all day and I felt even worse. I think that led to my depression and made me feel more anxious.

I can limit my social media and stop looking at all the Facebook posts and all the things that people are putting up. I can be kind to other people. I can figure out how do I be supportive and helpful to my community even when I can’t be out in front of them. I can find fun things to do at home. I can think about the narratives that are in my head.

How am I processing this? What am I thinking about? What am I giving meaning to? It would be a healthy exercise for anyone who is reading this. When you are done creating your own circles and put concern or what I can’t control on one of them and put influence or what I can control in another one of them and do the same exercise. Put your big concerns, those things that keep you awake at night, and think about how you can influence them.

What the message is, no matter how big the concern is, there is always a way you can influence it. I can’t control that I live in a time of a pandemic. What I can control is how I move through it so I can be kind to people. I can think about others as well as what I want to do. I can listen to the best recommendations of folks saying, “This is how we are going to get through this.” I also know that this is going to create a lot of conflicts. Conflict is also something that we can influence. It is a part of life. It can be good or bad, depending on how we learn to deal with it. Every time two people are together, the potential for conflict is there.

No matter how big the concern is, there is always a way you can influence it. Share on X

In America, there are at least two people together every day in social isolation. The opportunities for conflict are rising. In Oregon, there was some talk about whether or not domestic violence issues have risen because people are being confined in sometimes small spaces. It is something to think about when you learn to go through conflict. What is your conflict style? Are you an avoider, confronter, forcer, collaborator, or compromiser?

My suggestion would be that when you have conflicts with people, deal with them when they are small and disagree with ideas, not people. Don’t look at the person as the problem. Look at whatever it is that you are feeling. What I have learned about conflict is when I take ownership of my role, I don’t have to see myself as a victim. I can see myself as part of the issue. I have to look at my own behavior and not play that victim mentality and say, “Woe is me. This is what is happening. The world is against me.” That would be easy to do, especially for people who have been laid off and experiencing loss of any sort, which is a lot of people.

I’m not saying that this is going to be easy or this is a fun place to be. I’m saying that part of moving through anger, resentment, resistance, shock, and denial is accepting that it is real and that it is how you feel. At a certain point, as we transition into this neutral zone, we have to start thinking about things like, “What are some of the possible impacts of this change?” Those may be hard to think about as you are sitting in the middle of whenever you are reading this and thinking, “I don’t know if I’m going to have a job. I don’t know if I can pay my bills. I don’t know if my kids will be able to eat.”

I’m sure it is hard to see the positive impacts. It is not a push to say you need to go there right away. It is more an awareness to say, “Is there a point in time in your day where you can think of something positive that is impacting you in terms of this change?” For everybody, it is going to be different. It is motivating me to think, “How do I use social media to get my message out? How do I move from selling my work to giving it away?” That is another soapbox that I could get on where I’m getting messages on a daily basis from people on LinkedIn, Facebook, and email that want to talk about, “Here are ways that you can move through this challenging time that we are in.”

It is either through their books or webinar. Eighty percent of them in the end say, “You can have all of this for only $97 or $997.” People are selling support that I think you should be giving because of the time that we are in. What I’m going to do over these series of episodes, webinars, and Facebook Lives is I’m going to give you strategies, tools, and processes to be able to think about how you are moving through this time and ways that you can talk about it with each other.

This is not easy, fun, and something that somebody sat around and said, “I can’t wait for a pandemic to happen so that I can test and challenge everything about my being.” I believe that we as a society around the world are in a reset. We have a big choice to make about how we move back into the world once we are all back out again together.

The big question for me is, are we going to keep being divided? Are we going to keep isolating ourselves based on race, gender, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomics? I would submit that, to some degree, we have always had social distancing only. We haven’t seen it as extreme as we are now, social distancing based on race, age, socioeconomics, religion, and politics. Pick any category you want. There is a way that we can divide and distance ourselves from each other based on the narrative we have about the other person.

When we are in extremes, that’s when we start to have to process what we are going to do. A question to think about is, what is within and what is outside of your control regarding this change that we are in and we are all having to go through? I will go back and frame a couple of things that I want to leave you with. One is Maya Angelou’s quote, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” The other is thinking about and having a conversation with somebody about the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence or the Circle of Control and what you can control and cannot control.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Share on X

To do that, write down the Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern on two different pieces of paper. Write down all of your concerns. On the other paper, write down how you can influence them because the message in that exercise is that no matter how big something is, you can have an influence. Everyone is influencing themselves and each other throughout this whole process. The only question is, how are you using your influence? That is another exercise. The other piece is to be aware that what you are going through in terms of grieving and loss is normal. How do you have conversations with people and do whatever you need to do?

One day I sat in front of my wife, and I broke down in tears because I was sad. The next day she was sad. We accepted each other’s sadness because that is where we were. Stress kills. If you already suffer from anxiety or depression, what you are going through can add to it. Rather than doing nothing, think about how you can work through that. Understand the change, transition process, shock, denial, anger, and resistance are normal. What is abnormal is trying to hold it in and act like it is not real. Find ways to express that, and think about what is within and what is outside of your control.

The final thought is, “What is one thing you are going to do to lead yourself through this transition?” Going deep within yourself to understand that you have influence, you can move through this and be hopeful. This is a great opportunity to test if I’m able to use the things that I have been teaching other people to be vulnerable, honest, open, and accept my feelings, but not allow myself to drown in my feelings. Is it a big test? This is not easy for me either.

Complete those exercises and even do a little journaling, a reflection about anything that came up for you through reading this blog, and find somebody to talk to. Share your thoughts and feelings. Allow them to have that same process with you. We are going to be dropping episodes about two a week around Hope and Healing. For each episode, I’m going to give you some more exercises you can do.

If you don't care for yourself, you have nothing to give to other people. Share on X

If you commit to doing things that are offered, the level of depth and what you get out of it are completely correlated to what you put into it. I want to offer opportunities to be able to support you in going through this process that we all are affected by, and we can all choose to continue to work together, to be collaborative, to have hope for the future, and to begin or continue your healing process because going through this without healing, whatever it is that is happening, means that it can continue to rise.

We are going to continue this series on Hope and Healing. Be kind, be safe, be blessed, take care of yourself, and take care of each other. Remember, self-care is not about being selfish because if you don’t care for yourself, you have nothing to give to other people. Take care of yourself and have hope. I will look forward to talking with you again soon.

 

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