As we enter a period of renewal and change, Your Clear Next Step is committed to helping our customers make their businesses and workdays even better. We will be here to walk beside you, to listen, to connect, and to aid in your search for clarity. In doing so, we are offering a free, daily Zoom call, called Daily Connections, at 1:15pm (CDT) every weekday from 3/19/2020-5/1/2020.
These calls are a chance for us to share tips and discussion about relevant topics (working remotely, maintaining consistency in uncertain times, building relationships across geography, staying motivated, staying connected, etc) and network with each other to provide help and support during this time of change.
Thank you to everyone who was able to join us today! The next call will be Friday, April 3rd at 1:15pm (CDT). Click here to join.
On today's call...
Sinikka shared a few tips about naming uncertainty.
Some of us are better with “gray” than others. But most of us don’t really talk with fondness about “uncertain times”. Naming uncertainty can help us. Naming uncertainty can give us something to focus on. It can also help manage the powerful fear that often comes with leaving a thing unnamed.
So, what are some tactical, practical ways to name uncertainty?
- Defining the borders of uncertainty – what is/what isn’t uncertain
- Admitting that we don’t know can free us from the pressure
- Acknowledging that things will change more will steel us to the truth
- Finding a future end date can help us deal with the gray of today
- Contingency planning like we talked about earlier this week can help us be tactically prepared
Here were some ideas and questions shared by the group:
- I think one of the biggest uncertain is how people will react to all of this. So, to think about how you will define yourself, what you know about yourself, and how you’ve reacted before so that you can be better prepared to react and respond in this situation.
- Learn to find internal peace and quite so that you can differentiate between the different voices and feelings in your mind.
- We become anxious when things are uncertain, and things feel uncertain because we can’t control them. So, when we focus on external problems that we can't control that’s when fear and uncertainty can take over. So, shift your focus to the things you can control, specifically your own outcomes.
- It’s okay to get things wrong. This situation is so new it's unfair to expect to get everything right.
- I was in a conversation yesterday about crisis fatigue, and two of the ideas that resonated with me is that business leaders need to soften their tone (stop sending the emails that say “hand tough” because that’s not fully acknowledging what they're going through) so I think I's especially important to admit you don’t know everything. The second thing was that sometimes people just need you to sit with them in their struggle. I think the point that you made about assurance that things will change, is the nice bow you can put on the sitting with someone in their struggle.
- The meditation I use at times like this: Right now, it's like this.
- Right now, are you okay? Not two days, or two weeks, or even two hours from now. But knowing you are okay and have control right now, makes you feel like you a bit more certainty.
- Doing our best to have a non-emotional, and more of a cranial, statistical, or even scientific response can help a lot as well.
Have a topic you'd like to see covered in one of our conversations? Add it to our IdeaBoardz by clicking here.
