Business-as-usual has been slightly unusual of late.
Only thing is, lately I’ve actually been enjoying the very things that I’ve been trading much of my life to maintain, namely my FAMILY and my HOME. Could it be that the shaking caused by this one world event has revealed that a temporal quest for value, worth and meaning could cause us to miss out on life’s most important treasures? Save the whale, save the trees, save the shopping centre, football club, village hall, or even the local library – but who cares about saving the people? I’m not belittling community causes but the greatest of miracles on earth today is humanity. The miracle of life is something to behold, a wonder, a 400 million to one chance. The greatest treasure we all have is each other and, locked up, we‘re surrounded by the very people who should already have our attention.
Days fly past and we can’t reclaim them, but someone has hit the reset button, giving us the opportunity to rediscover what is right under our noses. It’s time to re-evaluate, to give without expectation, to see what type of humans we have become. Now is the time, as someone once eloquently put it, to ‘love our neighbour’.
I enjoy LinkedIn and the possibilities it holds, but right now, inventing sales pitches and various discounts to get work in at all times of the day and night somehow doesn’t fill me with excitement. Work will come, but right now I don’t want to miss out on what should be at the core of our motivation – people.
For me, people are my priority, and lately, I’ve caught up with the very people that often get relegated in the quest for safety, security and success. Family. It can be too easy to ignore the plea, ‘Dad, can you play outside with me’, when trying to be responsible and ‘adult’. We are there in body but not in spirit as we send another out of hours email or DM, searching for the deal that may keep us.
It’s like our operating system has become flawed. Humankind is being rebooted to be more ‘kind’ and value life itself. Rather than just choosing what works for us it’s time to go out of our way to help someone else. We’ve forgotten that the freedom previous generations fought for wasn’t for us to grow self-entitled, but rather to pass on that spirit of sacrifice and love. Self-isolation has taken us all out of the game to have a good, hard look at ourselves.
Life has changed. Everyone is giving it a go as a wise sage on camera, even the church worshipped remotely with live streaming for one weekend (they all became televangelists for the day). There’s an opportunity to embrace this season and try new things; a podcast, a videoed Zoom call or going LIVE. This week I networked online with IntroBiz, was part of the NatWest Next Level Programme online, met daily with Microsoft Teams with my now remote team, and enjoyed Executive Foundation from my screen with fellow peers. My normal work routine has been different but it’s working.
At Cre8ion we pride ourselves, as a brand marketing agency, on our exceptional storytelling ability, and our exceptional team work hard to deliver. We are focussed on building our proposition around the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals to ensure we have a stronger purpose and people and cement our contribution to this amazing planet. We are building the necessary infrastructure to becoming a B-Corp and using the time to serve our clients with even stronger funnel systems and CRM’s.
I do want to help save the planet but I don’t want to lose my family in the process.
May I encourage you not to give in or give up, but rather to look in and lookup. Take this once in a lifetime opportunity to address your priorities and start making changes now, because when this thing finally passes (and it will), life will still have its demands, but we can have our boundaries in place. With everything on pause and a lack of distractions, we can commit our attention to the right things at the right time.
So, grab that ball, PlayStation controller, musical instrument and be ‘present’, giving back what the rest of the family actually crave, your presence!