What is Truly Valuable (and What to Do About It Once You Know)
The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally upended the way things are supposed to be. On a global scale, it’s impacted every continent and every community. It’s also set fire to our personal stories — the way we thought things would individually unfold for us. The stories of what we’re supposed to do, get, be, how fast, when, and in comparison to what. None of these stories will go back exactly to the way they were before.
We All Know the Old Normal Was Broken
Personal stories differ, but we’ll take a stab at some that might come to mind: The sense of never good enough. The question of where I’d expected myself to be by now. The belief that I’m too much of this or too little of that. Comparison and FOMO. Scattered priorities. Rejection of opportunity costs. Style over substance. Messaging around innovation tied to a bias for the status quo. The unwritten rules of what is acceptable.
If our old stories are on fire and the old normal was broken, this naturally poses questions: What possibilities can we create? What can we aspire to? What new stories do we want to craft? Who will we be on the other side of the pandemic?
In the New Normal, What Will Be Truly Valuable?
The good news is that each of us is now presented with a unique, rare opportunity to choose, consciously, what will be truly valuable. We each have the power and authority, from wherever we sit, to set a high bar, to reject the untenable shoulds and supposed-to’s, to let our highest values guide us, and to influence the cultures around us.
Right now we have an opportunity to make serious, real progress on what is valued in life and at work. An opportunity to find more fulfillment and joy in our lives. A chance to stop the “this is how it’s done” norms and shift to actions that provide genuine long term value.
The Space Between The Past and The Future
Experts in storytelling talk of the liminal space, in between what was known and understood and what is coming, due to change and disruption, but isn’t yet understood.
This is the time when old ways of operating — business habits, social norms, politics-as-usual, mindsets — are coming to an end* but the new ways have not yet been fully established.
The space between, while the old is concluding and the new is not written, feels uncomfortable. It feels unmoored. It is also the place that grants us time to think, time to decide or refine our values, time to imagine what our ideals could be and dissolve old stereotypes.
The space between is thus a place of power. And a place of creation. Because every single one of us is in the place between stories now, each and every one has the agency and authority to make intentional, conscious choices about what comes next. We now have the opportunity to turn off auto-pilot and become someone who drives, navigates and innovates right from wherever we are. We have the opportunity and the right to know that we are the authority and we are always at choice — and to remember that in fact this was always the case, no matter what the prior “rules” said. We have the opportunity to keep our power and choose not to numb out, hope someone else fixes things, or turn our choices over to hierarchy and strongman leaders. The space between stories grants each of us the title of leader, chooser, author, activist, pilot.
The most important thing we can do in this space between, is to use our authority and power as leader, chooser, author, activist, pilot — from wherever we sit and with whomever we influence — to set a high bar for what is valuable. By doing so we start to write the story ourselves, and by writing the new story from a place of thoughtful intentional choice, we start to travel the pathway of the story and step into a new normal co-created by us all rather than done to us.
What does it mean to set a high bar for what is valuable? We have only to look at what wasn’t working and serving our personal and our collective highest good in the old story. We have only to ask ourselves where did we feel we wore a mask or played along with a charade? Where did we feel an empty hole we didn’t want to face? Where did we feel powerless, or disconnected from our community, or as though we were caught up in a huge machine? Where did we feel successful on paper but not in our hearts? Where did we yearn for meaning and a bigger picture? Where did we feel deeply unsettled with business or politics, but it seemed there was no clear way out? That never-ending sense of who is better and who is worse and grass is greener and busy-busy-busy as a sign of status? Sometimes, it is easier to start with what does not work, what we do not want any longer.
We believe that it is a natural human calling to be inspired by a high bar, and to collectively work towards it. The course of human evolution echoes and illuminates this calling. As all of us set our own individual values-driven high bars, we propose that there are certain collective high bars to meet, exceed and be inspired by. As you craft your own next story, we offer the following high bars to consider.
- Intentionality and choice: Using intentional choice in our words and actions. Freeing ourselves from “shoulds”
- Self-efficacy: Believing in our individual leadership and influence
- Collaboration and community: Prizing collaboration and community, as humans evolved to do
- Compassion and Equity: Humanizing everyone, not just those similar to us. Recognizing that equity does not come as a loss of what we have. Taking care and proactive consideration for all in our communities
- Anti-racism: Actively, vocally rejecting both overt and subtle racism, proactively working to dismantle structural racism in our society and workplaces, examining and understanding our privilege and personal role to play, prioritizing BIPOC leadership and voices
- Respect and dignity: Seeing authority, capability, and competence in everyone, not just those similar to us
- Insight and objectivity: Embracing nuance, expertise and complexity over simplistic viewpoints. Questioning and dismantling gendered, racialized, privileged and class-based norms
- Courage: Speaking truth to power, and truth to our spheres of influence
- Humanity and The Greater Good: Questioning me-and-mine, resource hoarding and turf mindset. Prizing human experience beyond work, power and status
- In a nutshell: Redefining what success even is
How to Start Designing Your New Story
We recognize that the gap between the old ways and the new, truly valuable ways might be sizable. We call them “high bars” in earnest.
But if we want to walk away from this having shed what was dysfunctional, uninspiring, short-sighted or mean-spirited from before, then the answer is to consciously choose. Not to hope the reset we yearn for happens, but to thoughtfully craft it.
That crafting starts with deciding our intentions, and it’s not hard to do.
If you haven’t done an exercise like this before, or it’s been some time, this is worth pausing to do. Our values and priorities naturally evolve over time and experience; the pressure of big changes like the events of 2020 speed that evolution.
Redefine your top three values. Use a worksheet like this one for ideas. (There are many other values worksheets just a google search away.)
Identify the three higher ideals you want to stand for. Pick from the suggestions above or create your own.
Make a Live-Out List. Brainstorm ways you’d like to live out your values and higher ideals in your work, family, and community. Focus on action verbs. Small ideas and big are equally valuable.
- List things like strategic approaches, practical actions, communication, thought patterns, parenting choices, decision-making, boundary setting.
- Take note of the obstacles you might encounter — how might you overcome them? Add those actions to the list too.
- Pick three to five from the list that most appeal to you.
Prioritize what you’ll commit to doing. Pick from your Live-Out List:
- 1 Big Thing over the next 12 months
- 4 Quarterly Things, one every three months, to support your Big Thing
- 1 Small Thing in the next 30 days, to serve your Quarterly Things
- The tiniest, most specific Next Action over the next week, to support your Small Thing
Identify how you want to be accountable to your Next Action. How about to your Small, Quarterly and Big Things?
Live Out Your Story
These values and ideals, these big and small actions, are the start of your post-pandemic normal, the story you’ve begun to choose and develop yourself. They’re not a set of norms and priorities chosen by others and imposed upon you; they’re not someone else’s agenda. They’re your vision for what is important, what is possible, and what serves the highest good. This story cements your power and authority to change what needs to change and to bring forth not just a new normal, but a better normal.
