Stand Tall, grab your sneakers and let’s mush
Somewhere in your life, in this round of existence, you are the leader and comfort to someone whether it’s your team of staff or your baby girl or your elderly parent. I guarantee someone looks up to you for comfort and guidance, a barometer of what is and what will be.
Historical moments of crisis of the proportions we are living now, movie levels it has to be said, call for character and substance and reveal so much about each and every one of us. Social media is full of clichés about the key moment in humanity this chapter is etc, memes abound. Funny and not so funny. But look closer to home, in your own immediate world, in whatever capacity you are the leader…then guess what? Tag, you’re it. Like never before. This is your moment.
Consider who your tribe is, swallow your doubt and indecision and stand tall, take the sword. My tribe consists of my family, my work family — my team and my other motley crew of friends all over the globe, so many people to love and worry about, how blessed but how awe-inspiring too to be so frightened for so many people and that’s without even considering the community, the people we don’t even know personally who we want to be well.
We have a chance now to show our loved ones, our communities what we are made of and really contribute to the comeback.
Yes, the comeback, because there will be a comeback, this will pass and the virus will move on but there is always a comeback that we have to be ready for. We will have to be stronger than ever before, with contingency plans and some semblance of structure. It may be that we start over, from 0 but start over we must and we will.
So here is what I do every morning of confinement, my survival routine that I will do until I am let out of my cage and maybe even then I will continue. I wake up every day and get out the yoga mat, the weights, the bananas I secretly loathe. I turn off the drone of the news, the incessant litany of sad commentary. Silence and breath.
I stretch and lift and contort myself, tiring my body and allowing the energy of my often scary thoughts to be sated in movement. I later pull on my trainers and hit the empty, eerie neighborhood and head out into the fields and olive groves to pound the earth with my feet, running until I am soaked through with sweat, exhausted and finally burnt out of emotion. The run is meditative, cathartic, emotional and hard, but it’s like fuel in an empty tank. What’s the line from that song, ‘you bleed just to know you’re alive.’
Endurance and resilience, endurance and resilience, endurance and resilience. The mantra of all runners, CEOs and tribal leaders from all walks of life. Endurance and resilience, now more than ever Endurance and resilience, I got this. We’ve got this.
