Getting Started
Over the last two weeks a new theme is emerging from conversations with others about our current situation and prospects for the future. People are tired. While many have endured and others have even come out of this already with new ideas, new objectives, even new professional roles and goals, many others are stuck somehow in a present that feels like it may be frozen in amber for a very long time.
While in New Zealand, the economy is not nearly as devastated as some doomsayers projected, it’s also still rolling forward mostly on momentum and a collective held breath. I’ve been told by several recruiters that hiring is at a virtual standstill. Twice I’ve applied for a role only to hear within days that the entire department has been thrown into a restructure, and there is no assurity that the role -- or even the hiring manager role -- will exist coming out of it. As a result of this high uncertainty, people are stuck. A person who has a job is not eager to rock the boat or go looking for a new one right now as the odds are very slim that the new roles will be there. People like me with unfortunate timing who went into lockdown without a role are finding it incredibly hard to get employed. And of course there are many thousands whose industry, organisation, or role disappeared during the past months.
Not to be too alarmist, but this is how economies go tits up. Worried about the future, companies and individuals spend less. However, by spending less they collectively ensure that the future will be at least as bad as they fear. It’s a negative feedback loop at the macro scale, and it is why it is so incredibly difficult to get out of truly deep recessions, let alone a global economic depression. Similarly, at the micro scale of the individual, we also get stuck in a negative feedback loop. Worried about our future, we pull that thread of negativity bias and see everything in a red frame. The worry extends beyond the obvious economic well being and worms its way into other areas such as our health, our feelings about family and friends, and erodes our very sense of self. However, being in this funk is itself destructive to our probability of success with our relationships, during a job interview, for our physical and mental wellbeing. This is how people go tits up. It’s why depression, suicide, family violence, and so many other tertiary impacts are endemic to economic downturns.
I can’t help anyone with the macroeconomics here. The moment the virus escaped the first city and emerged into the broader world, the global economy was fsked. Please just ignore any of those idiots on the news banging on about how this government or that policy choice would have prevented this economic downturn. There are other paths we in New Zealand and more broadly other countries and economies could have attempted. ALL of them would have ended with some form of long-term economic disaster. It was a pick-your-path horror novel which actually all led to basically the same ending.
What I can suggest is that we work on the individual response and our own emotional well being. I need this help so I’m asking you to take on the same task. We who are stuck -- either in a job we really don’t like or unemployed or doing school from home instead of uni -- we don’t have to spiral down into a dark place full of self-loathing, fear, exhaustion and regret. It’s tempting, it’s easy and it’s obvious to go there, but this isn’t a normal, individual change process. We are not uniquely broken right now. We are part of a whole community of others who are also stuck, and we can make different decisions than our forebears did during past global economic disasters.
I am inspired by young people right now. In the face of economic, social, and environmental disasters around them everywhere, they are mobilising. They march and they campaign online and they make silly videos to explain powerful truths. They will be damaged more than any other group by our current mess, yet they still fight for a future for themselves and the people around them knowing -- no wanting -- it to look nothing like the past. The least we can do is emulate that energy and fight for ourselves.
Every day I wake up and look across the landscape of my day and feel a sense of dread at how little there is to validate my sense of self-worth. There is no work. There are no meetings or reports or training sessions. Every day I read the news and the political economist training bubbles up and tells me that this is my new norm, that there is a high probability I will continue to have these same days for quite a long time. And every day I have to go through the exercise of green framing every god damn thing from my conversations with my daughters to the 100th job application cover letter.
This is exhausting. What I need to do instead is be more like those young people marching in the streets and stop fighting for a return to normal. It’s time to just be something and someone else. It’s time to find a cause or join a group or volunteer for a thing. I’m only stuck because I’m trying to recreate a life that just doesn’t exist any more. I don't know what the new me looks like. I do know, though, that the way an economy recovers from a depression is when a lot of people like me stop being stuck and start spending, start businesses, start doing random things that collectively move all of us into a better place. I may never get a job as a change lead again, but I’ll be out there somewhere. Just… doing.
“The hardest thing about getting started is getting started.” ~ Guy Kawasaki
Would you like to participate in a Resiliency Seed on the starting a new habit? Please join me for a 15 minute Zoom Thursday, 25 June at 9:30am.
