If you have landed here, you most likely wandered out of the Brink Conference looking for the worksheet that I promised in my short presentation in the expo hall. May blessings be upon you for watching most of the thing.
Disclaimer: Months ago, when I first submitted my info to Jenna for the conference, I thought it would be a great opportunity to pivot in the direction that the universe seemed to be pulling me. After a small, but successful business presentation at the PMA in 2019 and a number of conversations with the friends that I have accumulated in the industry, I was on the verge of forming a consulting business for Pilates studio owners and managers. However, running a large program and raising a small child perpetually put this dream project on the back burner.
Enter the pandemic.
I was furloughed and told that I could not engage my staff in anything resembling work. Unemployment kept my family comfortable, so I started working on this blog and was able to develop a social media strategy for this blog and my Anatomy Courses. I ALSO SPENT MUCH NEEDED TIME CATCHING UP WITH MY SON AND HUSBAND, who take the back burner to my work life more often than I would like. Jenna offered me a space in the Brink Syndicate, and I made plans to have this blog be worth reading and began to form a business plan to offer my insight officially as a studio consultant.
Cue Racial Unrest.
Pause.
(Long moment of silence.)
May my ignorance rest in peace.
Words cannot possibly honor the seismic vibrations that echoed around he world beginning in May. In fact, we will still be feeling them for years to come. We should. This reckoning has been a long time coming. It SHOULD change us.
When Jenna brought us together again, I had already asked to replace my first submission. The video was completely irrelevant. It was about interviewing a new employee. It was about asking the right questions to get to the core of who was behind the impressive veneer that a candidate puts forth. Good material, but it felt a little tone deaf since a lot of us were more likely going to have to be letting people go. It was also a formula for finding like minded people. If 2020 has made me acutely aware of anything, it is that likeminded people en masse can be dangerous. I’m retooling that talk/workshop to eliminate anything that would give you tools for strengthening your confirmation bias. Yikes. It wasn’t my intention to lead anyone there, but looking back through my current lens, I could have been leading you in that direction.
When I looked at all of the skills that I could speak confidently about, most of them were obsolete to the current moment. All of them seemed irrelevant, except for one: weathering the storm.
2020 is the gift that keeps on giving! Even since recording that talk, more awful things have happened, and I’ve grown to simply accept that there literally is no limit to the unpredictability. The minute I think that things might be status quo something else happens. So, I’ve come to accept that this is a time of trials and crisis.
We are not the first human beings to have a heinous year, and we won’t be the last. With all the processing, coping, and extra self care, and struggle that we need to endure, it’s about all we can do to survive, find peace, and not bottom out.
I’m here to say that times like these need heroes.
If you are reading this, I know that hero is you.
Anyone working in the wellness industry has the makings to turn the tide in this ocean of pandemic precautions, political disappointments, and cultural disarray.
If you listened to my talk, thank you. I hope you found it uplifting, but I’m not convinced that it was. I felt so heavy giving it, and I still have a lot of weight on my shoulders. I contemplated tapping out because I wasn’t sure I had the bandwidth to organize my thoughts and sit down and tape them. Also, when something is so close, so in the moment, it’s hard to have perspective on it.
If anything, I just want you to know that you are not alone in this moment, and I believe that you can find your way AND lead others into the light.
For anyone not attending Brink, bless you for reading this far. The nutshell of my presentation was that we are all heroes in some way every damn day. It’s okay to feel how you feel, but when you are looking to find a direction in which to take action, looking at your life through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey might help your find inspiration to weather the storm, fight the demon, save those that need saving, or just do the dang thing that needs to be done.
If you want a nutshell of the hero’s journey concept, this youtube video is succint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Zxt28ff-E
I promised I would leave you a worksheet here. I also made an infographic of the clock I was talking about. It’s not gorgeous, but I didn’t want to steal it from someone else.
Click the download below for a printable worksheet. I made it just for this moment, as a means to lend you my thought process. Think it through, or nerd out and on the page or in a journal, take some time to wax poetic about how you see each of the stages of what you are going through. Filling in blanks with force you to organize your thoughts and face them. There are no rules and no right answers. You can use the steps a number of ways. You can go chronologically. If you are in real dire straits, you can start at 6, and work backwards from the crisis to figure out how you got there. Then, work forwards towards the outcome you would like to see.
If you get stuck working your own journey, take a step away and analyze any story that speaks to you. Frequently, I get stuck at “Crisis”. So once I define what my crisis is, I look for someone else (a hero in a film, a friend, a neighbor) who is having the same crisis and how they got out of it. I take the good and learn from their mistakes and shape my future from it.
You can do hard things.
We all can.
Lisa Moves 