Be(a)ware of the Ide(a)s of March

In the tragedy Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare, and supposedly also in real life, Caesar was warned by a soothsayer to ‘beware the Ides of March. ‘ Caesar was killed on March 15th, and in Roman culture, the ‘Ides’ typically meant a day falling between the 13th and 15th of the month. The Ides of March is so unlucky that it is often spoken as a warning: “Beware the Ides of March. 

Jason Silva characterized the current state of the world (through a short video) as existential indigestion – a forced dark night of the soul or involuntary killing of the ego. He compares this state to the burning of the symbolic self so that something else can be born.

It was the day after 15th March that I stayed at home and worked for the entire week. A first of its kind this year, as I have been traveling every week barring one week from January 2020.  It was because of the COVID 19 virus clampdown that I had to work from home. It has been a very different experience working from home. Apart from the day to day calls, WhatsApp chats, mail communications with intermittent chats with family, we have developed a new rapport with Phones and devices.

I read somewhere that, “we are entering a digitized world when your finger touched the screen of your smartphone and clicked on a link, the government wanted to know what exactly your finger was clicking on but with coronavirus, the focus of interest shifts. Now the government wants to know the temperature of your finger and the blood-pressure under its skin.”

The world was aware of the COVID 19 virus since December ’19 but we didn’t see this coming thick and fast and therefore shaping a new world. As we have a deluge of information around COVID 19 updates and its effects I thought of looking at 2020 March from a new perspective.

Let us be aware of the ideas this March has offered us by destabilizing and disrupting our routine lives. In the search for ideas, I came up with a set of things I had done so far in the last 7 days of lockdown which I thought of sharing.  I had the opportunity to chat with a set of leaders from two groups in TILT. The topics were very fascinating “Rise of you” and  “Reimagining Networking”. These sessions led me to believe and share a virtual bonhomie with all the participants. We figured out that these are times that will pass and we decided to create ourselves for the future.

I googled for “how to be more resilient when things get tough” and it gave me a good set of tips.

This is my list of 10  Ideas to be more Resilient When Things Get Tough :

1. Don’t try to solve problems with the same thinking that created them, Reach out to more people and share it with them. I had the opportunity of sharing some of the challenges with my coaches and mentors
2. Master your emotions before they manage you, the best hack is to write it down and ask ‘”Is it true”?
3. Stay tough which means you have to build  a very empowering story for yourself about yourself
4. Keep growing, Read, learn, share with others, it could be as simple as explaining to your daughter about the lockdown.
5. Stay prepared, this is the best time to prepare for the new normal, take online courses, register for webinars, listen to podcasts of your interests
6. Pick yourself up, as many times as it takes to move you towards your goal
7. Reward the small wins, be it a small completion of one chapter of a book
8. Keep giving, Be active with your community, share your perspectives on a Zoom call or a short video on Whatsapp
9. Build relationships, this is the best time for camaraderie and communion with family and friends. Message and WA people with whom you have not been in touch for some time.
10. Create your own meaning, I have these lines of Tony Robbins on my whiteboard, ” Life is all about you becoming more. When you do, you feel more alive and you have more to give and that’s the purpose of life”. Pick yours.

Technology has flattened the distances between people and today people are distancing from each other to flatten the curve. We are apex predators and we can come out of this period as we have done in the past. That is how we become what we are destined to be.

Ideas from March got me to see, think and feel the emerging world requirements.

Are you building a new set of skills, behaviors, and actions to prepare yourself for the future?

How can you future proof your relevance in the post-COVID VUCA (Volatile Uncertain Complexity Ambiguity) world?