Enhanced Transcribe:
Hey folks, Dr Ro here, hope you’re well.
It’s Monday and I’ve just been recording a podcast actually, so I wanted to share something with you personally that came out. It was a conversation piece that came out in the podcast, but it’s been on my mind for a few days.
It’s the fact I think we are experiencing what feels like to me a point of suspended animation.
A lot of people have been messaging and reaching out and saying how do I deal with this in terms of what comes next?
It’s a fair question actually, how do I deal with this next stage of my life because you might have been starting a career, you might have been starting a business, you may have been coming to the end of a career.
I spoke to somebody about this yesterday and it might be that you on a personal level there’s a lot happening in your world, and this is just added more weight to it. You may be in a financial situation which is quite challenging as well.
The reality is and this is the point I want to make and I really mean this, we are in a point of suspended animation, meaning that we are going through an enforced period of time when we just have to pause and reflect. In the UK we’re up to about two weeks now. I think we’re just over two weeks. This is not much different to going on a two-week holiday.
On a two-week holiday what most people do is you go away you park everything there in the air, so you’ve got your work. You got some your projects from work going on here there might be a situation going on in your personal life that you parked over there. Might be something to do with your kids school over here, so you’ve got all these balls that have been thrown into the air and they are suspended when you go on holiday for two weeks usually, or a week to two weeks.
You know that when you come back you’re going to keep juggling and for most people, what they’re doing is just juggling this and juggling that. So throwing it up for two weeks and leaving it, not a problem because most people can come back, pick them up and that’s partly what makes them feel a sense of importance, a sense of satisfaction, sense of purpose. Is that I’m dealing with all this stuff in my life and I am juggling, juggling, juggling.
Covid-19, what it’s going to be? Two weeks, three weeks, four weeks five weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks. Balls go up and now they’re suspended in the air and for many people, for the first time in years, or even in their lives, the stuff that they’ve been doing is still freaking up there. It is hanging up there in the air.
That is the financial issue that you’re trying to deal with before, over there is the relationship challenge that you had even before covid-19 but now it’s really hanging out there.
Time with your kids up there, the fact you’re no happy in your career down here, the fact you wanted to start a new business over here. The fact that you wanted to learn a new language or musical instrument.
All these things look at the mail here, this is mail that has come in from lenders from my property business. The truth is, now is the time to get the magnifying glass out because you can actually pause. Even for me I’m like this a chance to park stuff so you go, this letter here represents one particular area of your life is it important anymore? You know what it’s not as important as I thought it was park it over there.
Bring the things that are important closer to you, and anything at all that is remotely not important, and actually you’re even thinking why do I have it in my brain. Maybe it’s time to tear it up, burin it, remove it, move it off the agenda or decide is it even worth me holding onto the future.
For the first time it’s like a massive, massive emotional house clearing exercise. Any issues you’ve been wanting to resolve, conflict with family members, financial things. If you have a folder which had your finances and you haven’t been dealing with it, deal with it, unpaid bills, credit card issues. I mean granted we’re in a situation right now because everything’s been going on it’s a little tricky because things are going on hold.
What about your bucket list?
What about the things you always wanted to do and you’ve been putting it off, putting it. What if you brought the bucket list out and you said, let me review my bucket list, let me have a look where are the places that I still want to go to.
Give them a sense of priority and now give them a timeline and start to prepare because when we finally get out the cage, and we finally get given the opportunity to get back out and live our lives again. Are you going to do this? And keep juggling the same bloody balls?
Or are you going to stop and go hold on a minute actually, I don’t need that ball anymore. I don’t want that ball anymore. I’ve been holding onto this for years, let me get rid of this. Get rid of everything that is not relevant in my life that I don’t need or based on my new set of values because that’s another exercise I’d like to talk to you about is re-evaluating your beliefs, your values, your sense of purpose. Imagine if you use this time to restructure all that, such that when you emerge from this experience covid-19, you have an opportunity to tackle the world in a different way.
It might be that the only four or five balls left in the air. But they’re the most important balls, they’re the ones you bought right up front close and personal, and you have to get these finished. You want to get these finished, you’ve got a passion to get this finished whereas those other ones that were just in the air, that were keeping you busy, making you feel important, they can go. They can be delegated; they can be passed on to somebody else.
Suspended animation for the next six to eight weeks at least. What can you do with that time?
What clearing can you do?
What can you cleanse out your life to give you a chance to breathe freshly and have a completely different set of purposes in your life?
Or maybe one purpose, but it’s driven in the same area, might be contribution giving to other people, being healthier and more vital.
I prefer to have a purpose for each of my key areas of my life that way I can be passionate in each one of those and I have meaning to it, as opposed to one big overall purpose. Which I do have a sense of but for a lot of people they can’t find that straight away they struggle and often it has to reveal itself to you. You can’t go find it.
Going back to this I know it’s a metaphor, but the mail I’ve got here over the last few days. This mail represents all the different areas of your life that you’ve been dealing with and trying to deal with, what if you start to pull some of this mail out and say it’s not important anymore. Why am I worrying about that?
This one really important and so thin it down so it comes down to just a few, but each one of these you’re going to be able to fulfil them because guess what, you’ve got the time now.
When you leave this space, I don’t believe we’ll get a situation like this again, use it as a chance to expand and grow, emotionally develop and to reconnect with some of the most important people in your life.
If you do that you will find this is a really refreshing experience, it is not to say it’s going to be painful because I think a lot of us are going to experience that, or businesses will be tightened up, careers, financial situation. But through that pain we evolve differently and through those muscles we evolve into a different person. Structurally, physically, emotionally.
Dr Ro signing out.
Hopefully that made some sense to you. Suspended animation use it as a chance to pull things down and do something positive and to get rid of things that are of less importance to you.
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