Do you get excited when spring comes, and it’s an excuse to clean your house, your yard, your shed? If you’re like me, this brings very little joy and excitement to me beyond the recognition that the season has changed. But, it signals the time to open the windows (while avoiding the deluge of pollen that has appeared) and let some fresh air into your home.

I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with today’s blog but as I was listening to a great podcast (Brené with Dr. Susan David on The Dangers of Toxic Positivity, Part 2 of 2), I realized I wanted to focus on where we are – 1 year into the pandemic response, all of the equity discussions that got more visibility this summer, and a US election that has shone a light on how divided our country is.

We are bound to get frustrated about something at some point in time…and maybe frustrated a lot about a lot of things in our life particularly in years of additional stressors like a pandemic, an election, equity issues, etc. If you have not been frustrated at some point in time this year (or even this week), I definitely want to talk about your Zen approach.

Any good road trip begins with preparation…what do I need to bring, how many stops do I think I’ll make, do I need to worry about weather, what directions do I need (thank goodness for Waze), how many snacks/drinks do I need for the ride, etc. Our lives are full of planning for what we might need, how we’ll get there, what we need to be prepared for. I usually am pretty good about managing all of the road trip planning in my head but sometimes not writing it all down and thinking ahead leaves me with a forgotten item or frustration for not remembering to think about something specific.

You may be asking why I’ve picked this as a blog topic, but for me it is aligned to our game of life. We have to choose the piece to take a risk on and sometimes it will be a solid choice because our foundation is solid; but inevitably at some point, we will pick the wrong piece to pull, and the tower will topple.

We’re done with 2020…we can go back to normal, right? No…we didn’t get a miracle do over when the clock turned midnight, but we did get a new year to do the way we want to do it. I know there will still be restrictions with the pandemic not yet under control, and things will be different than they were before we all heard the words Covid-19 but maybe that’s part of how our lives are transformed. Maybe it’s up to all of us to create the world we want to live in, the feelings we want to experience, the people we want to be.

What a year we have had! I know we still have almost 2 weeks left until we roll into 2021 but this is my last blog post of 2020 so want to share some key thoughts from the year.

How did we become our own worst enemies instead of our own best champions? I applaud you if you have won the war on this one. I win some battles and lose others…and the war is not yet settled though I think the tide is starting to turn.

We take physical leaps of faith as well as emotional and professional ones. I think it gets easier the more you do them because you know that your fear was just a protector from doing stupid things but that your instincts are good and jumping is fun.

The next right thing approach doesn't just have to be an answer for the big things, it can be the answer for how you manage your to-do list or how you deal with day to day challenges.  It's beauty is in it's simplicity...you don't need a long-range plan.  You just need to do the next right thing (without overthinking "right").