I learned yesterday that the county that I live has had a fairly steady Coronavirus count for the last few weeks. Unfortunately, it appears that my county’s orders for quarantine will need to be extended. Add on top of that, that 2.4 million more Americans filed for unemployment this past week that brings the total to more than 38 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits over the last nine weeks.
And we’re crossed, 93,000 deaths from the virus in American with more than 1.5 million cases.
There is a lot of pain, fear, anxiety, and heartache. There is also a lot of anger as people want to get back to work.
You are in the future when you read these words. How far in the future, I do not know.
But I will share with you some hope. I’m getting up at 5 a.m. so that I can write this book before I start my day job. I am blessed to still have my job and I’m so happy about that.
Economists are estimating that the unemployment rate has the potential to rise as high as 25% (last week we were at 14.7%—all of this is in stark contrast tot he record low of 3.5% we had a few months ago).
Times are bleak.
Uncertainty regarding the virus is high. Frustration and anger are rising as Americans want to get back to a “normal” life.
Unfortunately, that’s going to take some time.
No matter what your status in life is, the struggles that you’re going through, and the fears that you have, at some point you are going to hit a wall. Maybe it’s this pandemic that we’re living through or maybe it’s something else. Who knows?
The question that I’m going to ask you today is: What are you going to do about it?
There isn’t a magical cure for cancer or Coronavirus and jobs aren’t going to magically come back quickly. Our problems may be layered and complex. But the question remains: What are you going to do?
My answer: Make it work.
Find a way to survive and thrive.
I’m still making my way through Deena Kastor’s Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking Your Way to Victory and I recently read an inspiring part of her life story. When Kastor went to Europe one summer to take part in some races, she found adapting to life there extremely challenging. She wanted to give up and come home. She called her coach on the phone and he told her: “Make it work.”
Frustrated, she hung up on her coach but realized that she needed to find a way to get through the summer. She took all the negative around her (lack of a job, a car, and people she knew) and redoubled her efforts in her training. But most importantly, the things that once bothered her, she used as a way to see things from a different perspective. She allowed herself the freedom to grow and embraced change.
That’s hard to do and sometimes the changes were are going through can be difficult ones (and life-threatening).
“Make it work” doesn’t mean accepting abuse or being mistreated.
We need to find ways to create opportunities for ourselves and to build bridges to a better tomorrow.
Finding a new job might mean volunteering, taking a lower-paying job, or taking classes to become trained in a new skill. The problems that you have might seem overwhelming.
What if you break down the problems that you have, prioritize them, and then chip away at them with solutions.
You don’t lose weight overnight. I can’t train a marathon in a week. Cancer patients might need months of treatment.
To get to a better tomorrow, we need to start today—one step at a time.
Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.