This expression continues to be thrown around and it still feels off: “the new normal.” As an alternative, I offer this: instead of the “new” normal, switch to the “desired” normal.
It’s a tiny tweak but it’s huge in possibility. Sure, it’s natural to want to find meaning in the sacrifices of the last couple of years, but it’s also a moment of great and ongoing change. And, with systems and structures not only halted but actively shaking at their foundations and trying big things to dig in their heels, we have a moment to move and change in a way we didn’t have before. With routines still a bit broken, many have a beat to think about what we want our lives to look like and build with more intentionality than perhaps we did before. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about this for a year or more now.
Apply that to your work, or, even to your whole life. Imagine that if everything you believed and thought about work up to this point were to be wiped clean and you could form entirely new ideas and beliefs around what it means to do your work, what would that mean?
Free write, deeply and truly dig into the idea that the old ideas are gone and we are going to have to rebuild our routines either way, so we might as well build them exactly to our specifications.