I don’t know about you, but when I was thinking about 2020 back in the last months of 2019, I had starry eyes about the chance to enter a whole new decade, and that decade was full of so much promise and so many things I wanted to accomplish.
Because…how often do we get to start a whole new decade? Only every 10 years.
I just knew that 2020 was going to be ah-mazing!
I definitely had 2020 vision about the upcoming year.
I put together a 2020 Action Board, and I was going to do this, and this, and this, and this.
And I was SO excited!
Well…
Things were going pretty well until about mid March.
And then…
COVID-19 hit.
And it hit big.
And then there was the ensuing shutdown of pretty much anything and everything.
Our COVID life didn’t change as much as it did for others. We’ve both worked from home for years, and we don’t have any kids at home (so no sudden virtual schooling), but no matter what pre-COVID life was like, the past several months have been…different…for pretty much everyone.
But…
For some reason, during those first few weeks of the COVID shutdown, I was struggling a bit. Sometimes more than a bit. I felt anxious, and I was a bit surprised by that because our life really hadn’t changed that much.
So, I prayed to know what to do about the things I was struggling with and the anxiety I was feeling.
Then, one morning, as I was feeling more than the usual anxiousness, I had the thought come into my head, “Forget about those things right now. This is not the season for those things.”
And I was strangely okay with that. Which was a bit surprising because I’m a go-getter. I want to accomplish what I want to accomplish. I have goals. I’m a bit stubborn. But after receiving that feeling, I really felt okay, I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and I knew my prayers had been answered.
I took that 2020 Action Board and threw it away.
Not that all those things won’t ever happen, but they won’t happen this year. Or maybe next year. Or maybe never. Who knows.
While some of those things on that Action Board were things I was really excited about, I knew that now is not the time.
During the shutdown, many of us had to scale back on a lot of things that were taking up space in our lives and totally cancel even more of the things we thought were important. While some of these things were truly important, when all of this is over, and as life continues to get back to “normal” (whatever “normal” turns out to be), WE get to choose what is MOST important and what we let back into our lives.
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What an incredible and potentially life-changing opportunity we’ve been given!
It’s like a total life reset. A whole new 2020 vision is available to us.
How often does that happen?
Like…almost never.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about my priorities over the past few months, and I’ve been thinking about my life moving forward as things get more and more back to “normal.”
- Are there things I do want to do?
- Things I don’t want to do?
- How do I choose my priorities?
- How will I choose to make post-COVID life different and better than before?
Because if nothing changes, I’ve wasted this total life reset opportunity I’ve been given.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in all of these thoughts.
In fact, in the midst of the shutdown back in April, a survey showed that only 9% of British people wanted to return to “normal” once the shutdown was over.
So, here are the million dollar, total life reset, opportunity of a lifetime, new 2020 vision COVID-induced questions:
- What is worth going back to?
- What will I leave behind in my pre-COVID world?
- What will I do differently moving forward?
I know my Action Board for 2020 changed. Quite dramatically. Yes, I’ve accomplished some of the things that were originally on it, and I think those things plus what’s left really show my priorities—what’s essential.
It’s up to each one of us to make the best of this—hopefully, once in a lifetime—opportunity.
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For me? Here are some of the things I’m going to do differently:
- Spend more quality time with John
- FaceTime with our kids and grandsons more
- Talk to my parents more
- Get out and make new friends
- Spend more time with old friends
- Serve others more
- Take better advantage of quiet times and not let them get replaced by other, not-as-important things that compete for my attention
- Play the piano more
- Read more—tackle that ever-growing pile of personal development books
- Watercolor—there’s no “more” with this one because I haven’t water colored in over 10 years. But I really want to get back to doing this.
How has 2020 changed your perspectives?
What does your “new” normal look like? How will it be different from February 2020?
For me, I know I don’t want to blow this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I’ve been given to scale back to the basics and then be very careful about what I add back in.
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