For many people, the time that we are experiencing right now with the Coronavirus is a time of great pain and loss and tragedy. A big fat disclaimer: If this is going to feel triggering for you or unavailable for you, then I suggest you skip this one because we are talking all about positivity and what we can take from these times. Maybe you’re feeling very depressed and anxious right now, and this might be just the thing to point your mindset in a different direction. Who knows?
If you aren’t stuck in survival mode, but you’re feeling a little bit confused about the things that are coming up for you, this video is for you:
My Unpopular Opinion about Coronavirus (DON’T WISH THIS TIME AWAY)
The Secret’s Out
I have lots of people admitting to me (rather secretively) that they’re doing okay. That in fact, they might even be enjoying this time somehow, that it’s bringing out some great things in their marriages, in their parenting, in their work, just enjoying the fact that they have slowed down and simplified.
And of course, everybody is experiencing some levels of anxiety, some levels of fear, some levels of pain and loss for others (if not for themselves,) so there’s still a complexity. We feel both the worry and the fear and the loss for others, but also a kind of secret sense of satisfaction, of joy, of happiness, of gratitude for what is happening for ourselves, and that’s what I want to talk about here today.
How Do You Feel About Quarantine?
You might be at home, feeling the anxiety and frustrations and difficulty and challenges in the situation, but you also feel like, “Huh.. I’m actually not so excited to go back to life as it was. I actually want this to go on a little while longer.”
Maybe you don’t feel that quite so starkly. Maybe you feel like:
- “I didn’t quite love the rat race before.”
- “I had too much on my schedule.”
- “I didn’t love the rush of the mornings to get out of the door.”
- “We don’t have enough time in our home together.”
Or maybe you felt really:
- curious about your capacity to handle more time with your kids.
- curious about your capacity to homeschool, and you never felt brave enough to try, and suddenly you’ve been thrown into that reality.
- sad that you never saw your partner before, if you have one, and suddenly you’re really enjoying the time that you’re spending together.
Survey Says…
We asked on our Facebook group, Love Parenting with Avital, (and I very much invite you to join us there. It’s an incredible judgment-free zone.) We asked, “Has this time brought you closer together or further apart from your partner?”
And there were some people who were experiencing much worse partnerships and even divorce as a result of what they were experiencing throughout this quarantine together, but others found that the lockdown really brought them closer together.
That suddenly their partners had so much more empathy for what they take on each day, or understanding of why a daily flow is an important thing.
Suddenly, their partners were very much more on board with them, and they felt like a team, and they could also spend so much more quality time together, even if it was with the kids around.
What Are the Benefits of Being Under Lockdown?
So, we asked, and we realized that some people are finding a lot of benefits. Maybe you find benefit in the fact that:
- you can suddenly do yard work
- you can suddenly declutter your house in a way that you couldn’t before
- ,you have time to just sit on the floor and play with your kids for long hours that you never used to have and that you’re actually really enjoying
Often, our greatest awakenings are forced upon us.
It’s that near-death experience that someone has that suddenly makes them realize they want to leave their job and start that business they always wanted.
Or maybe it’s someone who lost their job, was suddenly fired, and that was the catalystic event for them to realize that actually, they want to simplify their lives, and they want to make do with less so that they have more time for the things that matter to them, like being with their children.
That is What Coronavirus is Gifting all of us Families
It is gifting us the opportunity to really meet ourselves in the mirror, to notice who we are as families and ask ourselves who we want to be.
Are our relationships solid enough?
Are we spending enough quality time together?
Are we spending enough time at home?
Hey, is this even the kind of home we want to live in?
And it’s suddenly calling into contrast all of our choices, all of our decisions that sometimes didn’t even feel like decisions before. I know for many of us, the job that we have feels like this default reality that we were kind of just thrown into. Some of us feel like the school system is the default choice.
Well, hopefully now, we’re realizing no, defaults aren’t the only choice.
What I am trying to point out is that we should seize this opportunity to ask these questions, to notice what’s coming up for us emotionally.
My Invitation to You
My invitation to you is to realize that
it is okay to see the beauty, to see the gifts, to reap the benefits that are to be had from this situation.
No one would’ve wished it. No one would’ve chosen it. But how do we interpret it? That is our choice.
We get to choose what we’re going to focus on in our families.
We get to choose what kind of realities we’re going to create, how we’re going to interpret this situation.
Are you going to interpret it based purely on the loss and the tragedy, or are you also going to see the gifts that it’s giving you as a family?
Are you going to take this opportunity to bounce forward rather than bouncing back?
Maybe the reality you had before Coronavirus hit was beautiful in some ways, but maybe this is the exact catalystic awakening that is going to throw the value of your life into higher contrast and make it more obvious to you.
- Where you want to be spending your energy
- What kind of work you want to do in the world
- What kind of parent you want to be
- What kind of life you want to live
- What kind of home you want to have
This is the exact opportunity you’ve been waiting for to wake up and make those choices from a place of intentionality, of awareness, of consciousness, rather than the default.
And so, I’m Calling You to Action
Don’t bounce back to your old life. Don’t wish this time away. Don’t just wait for everything to go away so you can go back to normal.
Design and craft and decide what your new normal is.
Reap the gifts of this time.
Learn about yourself.
Discover who you are as a family. Take note, mental notes and journal notes of what is going on and how you want to use this time as a teaching opportunity to bounce forward into the next reality of you as a family.
It may look the same as it used to, or it might look slightly or even very different.
I Will Challenge You Daily
I have to mention our challenge. Do you know about this? Each day, we’re doing something small to remind us of our creative powers, something small to get us in the driver seat, to remind us of what we do control versus all of the many things we don’t control.
This challenge is absolutely free, and it leads up to the opening of the Present Play membership, which only happens once a year.
This is my life’s passion. I’ve been doing this for years. Present Play is a membership with members from all over the globe, over 50 countries, and we have over 1,200 members, (and we’ve had that well before Coronavirus was even a thing.)
But since it has become a thing, everybody’s banging our doors down because suddenly, there is an emphasized importance of:
- being home with children
- creating a home that is a play-inducing haven
- reclaiming independent play
- stepping into the CEO role as parents
- feeling like we have a vision
- feeling like we’re crafting this incredible, blissful family experience at home
Suddenly, that has become relevant for everybody who’s home with kids, and so that is why we’re making this challenge publicly available.
Please share it with everybody you know. Don’t let anybody miss out on this. It’s only three weeks, but it’s these crucial three weeks when we are home with our children. We don’t know how long that will last, but this challenge and the Present Play membership will be highly, highly transformative for this time for everybody, so I want to really invite you to jump on with that. You can find it right here.
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