Now is the time

What does it take to move you to action?

Maybe you are an activator. You hate to wait. Before all the words are spoken your feet are heading out the door making it happen.

Perhaps you are more wired to deliberate by fully considering every angle to every obstacle before choosing to act.

No matter your wiring for action this pandemic season for many feels like a halt. A delay to dreams and plans. I feel the loss around me and in me. Not being able to see my mother. Not being able to gather with my large family. Restricting movement both locally and globally for so many of the students I work with.

And yet I would tell you with all the changing around us we can’t just wait it out. These big changes around us require us to consider what we can do right now even today to resist the urge to just wait out this whole crazy topsy turvy season. Perhaps this is the opportunity for us to consider our smallest daily activities more differently than we ever have before.

Here are some pointers for the way ahead no matter what lies ahead.

Make the first 60-90 minutes of your day the most fueling possible.

Now is the time to make sure that the beginning of your day becomes an anchor for you. These few minutes have more impact than any others on how you will navigate what you can as well as what you can’t anticipate. I have a free resource available for subscribers on morning habits. Now is a good time to review and recommit to your morning habits. When COVID hit and my husband began working at home we reexamined our goals for the morning and rearranged the timing and activities to adjust to the changes. Invest in discovering your irreducible minimum routines to begin your day with peace and confidence.

Pay attention to what you are paying attention to.

Now is the time to become more aware of what is getting your attention and why it’s getting your attention. When do you flip over to the news? When do you pull out your phone and go to Instagram/Facebook/Twitter? Why do you do that? What is triggering boredom or a need for distraction? It may seem obvious but consider the sources of information that are coming into your life right now. Limit the news, certain social media channels despite thinking that you need the information. During COVID, I have restricted myself to 15minutes/day to hear headline news. The rest I am trying to ruthlessly eliminate. The most important news seems to find its way to us.

Use the power of a pause.

Now is the time for implementing purposeful pausing throughout your day.

A pause may be a reflection at the end of the day for gratitude or it may be a mini pause during the day. I use pauses throughout the day to ask myself questions. I ask during one pause “Where did I feel aligned with God, others, and myself in the past few hours?” When I find myself sucked into reaction rather than reflection, I pause and ask myself, ” How would the best version of Mary respond to this? ” My hope is to get curious about my daily interactions. Pausing is the power to see in the smallest of moments my greatest opportunity to lean into transforming grace.

There are plenty of issues outside of our control and influence that we must wait on. We wait for a vaccine. We wait for a decision on schools being online or in-person. We wait for when we can see each other gather in larger groups together.

The issues that we do have control and influence over we must and we can choose now to make a difference. This pandemic is a gift of time to reveal those parts of our life that we can lean into transforming out of love for those we touch. No need to wait. Now is the time.