Last year (2022) was a turbulent year.
After almost two years of high alert, COVID finally arrived in my part of the world (Western Australia), with all the emotional and practical upheaval that entailed for everyone – both personally and professionally.
Then in my work life, a series of unfortunate events meant that I spent the year largely in crisis mode – focusing on delivering on organisational commitments, while also supporting colleagues as we all navigated choppy waters together.
By the end of the year, it felt like things were becoming more stable in my professional life and I downed tools for five lovely long weeks of leave.
It seemed 2022 wasn’t quite done with me, with a last blast of change meaning that my planned time of reflection, consolidation, rebalancing and refocusing – as well as plenty of reading! – had a different flavour than I’d anticipated.
From my work and reading on being a change agent in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, I’m a big believer that a key focus has to be on one’s own internal conditions.
A couple of key resources that I found really valuable were:
- How to do the work, by Nicole LaPera (on social media as the Holistic Psychologist)
- The Myth of Normal, by Gabor Mate (more on this book in another post)
- My phone picture gallery…
Key learnings
Dealing with change – either that I’m initiating, or that is “happening to” me – is an emotional business. While it can be tempting to try to push unpleasant emotions away, I’ve learned that this doesn’t actually release them. They’re still there – waiting for their moment! I found Nicole’s writings on inner child responses, and ego, really helpful reminders of this.
I’m lucky that I really enjoy my work. And I particularly enjoy the people I get to work with. But despite this, being in “coping” mode for much of last year meant that I felt I’d spent much of the year either at work, recovering from work, or preparing (girding my loins) for work. Even so called joyful activities were done in the service of responding to work. I saw friends far less than normal, and spent less time just “having fun”.
But as I reflected on the year, including looking through my phone’s picture gallery reminded me that I had, in fact, done lots of fun things. It was a fun exercise going through the year to see what I’d been moved to screenshot, or snap – and I’m going to do more of that this year.
But it was still useful to reflect that despite having done “fun things” my memories of the year were dominated by “coping”. My reflection is that I hadn’t had space to really process and acknowledge just how much the year had “cost” me. Someone shared some insights they’d gained on grief which reminded me that when managing change, it’s important to tend to the “loss” that is inevitable – even if what is coming is way better than what went before. So I’ll be making sure I tend to that too as we face the inevitable changes that come with working in a turbulent field!
This year I’ll be prioritising fun for fun’s sake (as opposed to as an antidote to over-extending myself at work). And “relational care” (hanging out with friends and family), and targeting my energy to where I can best make an impact.
Let’s see!
