One unexpected surprise emerging from the disaster

The week before the shelter-in-place order swept the Bay Area, I was away at a leadership retreat in Sonoma. While it felt safe and peaceful, the threat of the coronavirus was real. 20 other individuals representing 7 countries across the globe joined me. It felt like a miracle that everyone had made it to a central location to spend the week together. On our first day we took time to acknowledge everything it took for us to gather. 

I want to bring a part of that first day conversation to each of you. There is a valuable perspective worth sharing that came from one of my colleagues that day. Her family of origin lives in Wuhan, China - the epicenter of the coronavirus (she lives in Vancouver).  She had been living in the virus’s reality for a longer period of time than most of us can still imagine at this moment. 

“Humans are brilliant.”

That was the thing she had taken away from the pandemic’s sweep across her home country. We are adaptable beyond our imagination to unpredictable and unprecedented changes.

The entire education system of the world's most populated country needed a new approach given the quarantine mandate. One response may have been to cancel school and have children start back up again after this is all over. To pause until some future time. That is not what happened. An entire population adapted to a new way of doing something. The education system went virtual. An entire country lined up to support the change. And that new way had seemed far fetched before this all started. Ask any of your friends that work in education technology who have been trying to crack that nut. And now the world is following their lead.

If I choose to look, I can see bits of adaptability in the now. Saturday night we celebrated a friend's birthday with board games across 10 living rooms. Sunday I met a group of girlfriends online for a baby shower that should have been in person. This morning I joined a virtual pilates class. More than disaster will emerge.

I am not saying that these circumstances are ideal (they are not). What I am saying is that embedded within this worldwide disaster is the miracle of our human ability to adapt to our circumstances quickly. 

What have you noticed about your own brilliance in adapting to this new normal?

Shine on, 
Alicia