How 2020’s Social Unrest, Pandemic, and Financial Crisis Provide Great Opportunities for Growth

Over the course of the last several months of 2020, we have experienced a series of challenges that most have not witnessed collectively in their lifetimes: a financial crisis, a pandemic, and racial unrest. While each of these by themselves has the potential to wreak havoc, taken together they can be cataclysmic.

That said we also have an opportunity to grow tremendously from this unsavory trio if we change our perspective and our approach to addressing each of these challenges.  To be successful, we will need to develop better behaviors for managing our health, our finances, and our treatment of others.

This will require a type of leadership that has been absent in many of the conversations to date: internal leadership.  Exercising internal leadership will allow us to grow stronger as individuals, as a community, as a nation, and as a global community.

On leadership, Dolly Parton, once said, “If your actions inspire someone to do more, to become more, to learn more, and to dream more, then you are a leader”.  Nowhere in this quote is there a requirement to be an elected official, or to hold any other title of “leader”.  The most important tool for leading in this manner is a mirror, which each of us will need to reflect on daily.

Ask first, “how do my personal actions inspire me to dream more, do more, become more, and learn more?” Next ask,  “how are my actions inspiring others to do the same?” The answers to these two questions will provide the roadmap needed to grow collectively from the social, health, and financial obstacles facing our world.

 

Social Unrest

 The social unrest that we are experiencing in the United States has once again exposed a long history of inequalities among races, cultures, and genders among others. This exposure provides each of us an opportunity to look at how our actions or inaction have contributed to the suppression or oppression of those around us.

Albert Einstein once said, “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who witness evil and do nothing.”  The destruction of others’ property should not be confused with “doing something”.  To address our current social and racial unrest requires all of us to take out the mirror and look at how our own beliefs and biases have contributed to the deterioration of our society.

One essential behavior that seems to be lacking is empathy. When we take the time to demonstrate empathy toward others, we suspend our judgment of them.  In the city which I live, our city hall was overrun with people who chose camp out demanding better treatment for the homeless.

My initial response was to think that these individuals were not taking responsibility for their choices.  It wasn’t until I read several stories of individuals that had untreated mental illnesses or had been on their own since they were in their early teens that I realized that my quick judgment of these individuals was not that simple.

While some may have abused the situation, the majority sincerely needed our help.  We have a responsibility to help those in need. Through our positive actions, we have the ability to help others become more and do more.  Change starts with each of us focusing on being for each other and not being for self.

How will you take personal responsibility for improving your community?

 

Pandemic

For many, the recent pandemic has created incredible levels of fear and anxiety about their health. While we anxiously anticipate a vaccine and effective treatments for Covid-19, this recent crisis offers us the opportunity to reflect on how our lifestyle choices are helping protect us or putting us at risk for serious consequences if we acquire the virus.

While many look to scientists and governments to address the pandemic, there is one thing that each person can do that will have a far greater impact on their health and wellbeing than a vaccine.  That “one thing” involves taking personal responsibility for your health.

Our immune system is elegantly designed to protect us from pathogens that threaten our health.  Yet, when we eat poorly, don’t exercise, and allow stress to remain uncontrolled, we are increasing our susceptibility to the thing we are trying to avoid.  Yes, our poor behaviors have actually made us more vulnerable to what we are so fixated on avoiding.  This recent crisis provides an opportunity to assess how we need to modify our lifestyles so that our immune systems can do its job most effectively.

How will you take personal responsibility for improving your health?

 

Financial

As a result of the recent pandemic, our economy is suffering and unemployment is at historically high levels.  Once again, this crisis provides us an opportunity to examine our own financial health and our past decisions regarding how we have spent and saved.  We have become a society that has confused nonessential things with essentials.

The need for a bigger house, another piece of jewelry, one more video game or one more piece of clothing has created an environment where people have overleveraged themselves.  What’s more insane is that this consumption has often been to impress people that we don’t even like.

The financial crisis we are currently experiencing can provide an opportunity to pull out the mirror and ask ourselves what do we really need to be happy?  Is my current job providing me the financial security I need? Has my spending contributed to my own crisis?  What do I want my financial future to look like? When we take the time to reflect on these questions now, we can course-correct to a better and more stable future.

How will you take personal responsibility for improving your finances?

The financial crisis, social unrest, and pandemic we are experiencing today provide us the greatest opportunities to reflect on three critical areas of our lives: our finances, our connectedness to each other, and our health. Pain and struggle have been placed at our doorstep and we will now decide whether to learn from them and grow stronger or to place the blame on others and be destroyed by them.

Marcus Aurelius once said, “Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”  Many things have happened in the first half of 2020 that has provided the opportunity for us to broaden our minds.

It’s time to play an active role in rebuilding and avoid being victims.

I am, Patrick Veroneau, I am the CEO of Emery Leadership Group and the host of the Learning from Leaders podcast.  My focus and obsession are on helping individuals, teams and organizations develop the behaviors needed to inspire, empower, and compel others to follow. Email me here.