Where are the Silver Linings?

Where are the Silver Linings?

I’m a pretty optimistic kind of person and always look for silver linings in any situation.  It takes quite a bit for me to fall into a negative spiral of thought.  It very rarely happens and yet I found myself doing that for a brief moment over the last week. 

I have been talking to a few people about all the terrible weather we have been having in Auckland so far this year and the impact it is having on people’s health and wellbeing.  Last week we were dealt another huge downpour that flooded parts of Auckland leaving people stranded and dealing with yet another crisis.  A state of emergency was declared, and parents were encouraged to go and get their children from schools and daycare centers which, coupled with the weather, created gridlock in Auckland’s traffic which is bad at the best of times.  It was chaos.

My attention goes to how people are coping, or not.  If we think about the past few years, we came out of a global pandemic and were all super hopeful that 2021 was going to be a great year.  And it wasn’t. 

So, 2022 rolled around and we thought that would be the year, it was going to be amazing.  And it wasn’t! 

So, 2023 gets here and we were feeling it’s going to be awesome.  We had an amazing sunny week over Christmas and then New Year’s Day arrived as did the start of these crazy weather events.  Since then, I’ve lost count of the number of cyclones and storms that we have had to deal with.  People who only just had work completed on their flooded properties are now finding themselves ready to do it all again.  It’s madness.

And the toll these constant crisis situations are having on people is not great.  There has never been a time more important than now for us to check in on each other and make sure our people are okay – that we are okay.  It’s not just our teams and work colleagues but our family, friends, and neighbours.  And we must also make sure we have ourselves on the list of people to check in on – we can forget to do that sometimes.

I think we forget the accumulative effect the events of the last few years have had on us all.  For example, I was watching Grey’s Anatomy the other night (don’t judge me!) and it was an episode during Covid.  Watching some of those episodes, brought back for me how I felt at that time.  The isolation, having to wear all the PPE, feeling like our freedom had been curbed, desperately trying to get my daughter back from Canada and into MIQ, and the desperation of loss that some of us suffered – I lost my grandfather during Covid.  So, I’m watching this episode and I was right back there - triggered by a TV programme!

We add onto that the events of this year and it’s not surprising people are doing it hard.  And we must keep reinforcing that it’s okay for people not to be okay.

Now is a time for kindness and compassion.  Everyone is doing it tough by events that have been completely outside of their control.  Now’s the time to listen to understand and not to respond.  Now’s the time to be really clear on what is important in this given moment and make sure we don’t overload ourselves and others with the unnecessary.  Now is the time to make sure we create some time and space for self-care and the care of others.  Now is the time for all of that.

At the time of writing this, it’s a beautiful day and the sun is shining!  I’m again full of optimism about what is possible, even in these tough times, I’m reminded that we need to keep in touch with how we are feeling and how we are tracking.  If you haven’t done that for yourself recently, take a moment now and do a quick self-edit (what am I thinking; how am I feeling; what am I doing; and is all that working for me right now?) 

I truly do hope you have the most amazing week.

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