Never let a good crisis go to waste.
~Sir Winston Churchill

Crises: COVID-19, Climate Change, Midlife,
What Are We Learning?

Jett Psaris, PhD has written the most beautiful book I know about midlife crisis: her book titled Hidden Blessings- Midlife Crisis as A Spiritual Awakening is a book I recommend often to clients needing guidance in that stage of life. In it she writes:

Some experience their entry points into midlife as maximally disturbing, with overwhelming levels of stress and fear. They cannot believe this is happening to them: they feel incredulous. Sometimes they notice impaired judgment, confusion, and agitation [… ]. Not knowing what the midlife passage is about, most of us redouble our efforts to get back on track, resume our lives, move past the obstacle at hand, and do something -anything- to return to the predictability, control, and pleasures of normal life. Many of us resist the invitation to step away from our familiar lives because we don’t appreciate that the challenges we are facing are a call to transform. Instead we search for ways to overcome each challenge as we have in the past so we can resume traveling on a familiar track at familiar speeds. But the midlife passage will not be dismissed. We do not overcome it; it overcomes us.

Sounds familiar? Do you recognize yourself or our leaders in the above description? It makes sense because COVID-19 and midlife crises are both existential crises, and so is the climate emergency. While COVID-19 took us by surprise and has been very fast moving, the climate crisis is on a different timescale. Entering midlife too can be dramatic or gradual, but whatever the nature of the entry point, it communicates that our current life streams are drying up (Psaris).

So, what if the Coronavirus pandemic and the climate change crises were entry points into a transformational midlife passage for the world? a signal that the Earth’s life streams are drying up? a wake-up call? What if, instead of rushing back to the old “normal”, we took the time to look at the opportunities, the hidden blessings that COVID-19 has brought us? What if we reflected on what we have learned from this situation, on a personal, professional and societal level?

This is what I would like to invite you into while we are slowly re-opening our world, while there is still an opportunity to continue to adopt some of the changes we have made that are good for our wellbeing and for the wellbeing of our planet. Maybe it’s driving or flying less? Maybe it’s working from home more often? Maybe it’s having family dinners on a more regular basis? Or spending more time in Nature listening to birdsongs? Or gardening? Or cooking fresh meals from locally sourced products? Maybe it’s keeping this rediscovered hobby of sewing to make your own garments and reduce consumerism? Maybe it’s connecting with your neighbors more regularly and creating a supportive community?
Below you will find a series of questions for your self-reflection. I also include the resources that have helped me in my sense making. I hope that you will find them useful.

This is my small attempt at gathering my thoughts around this shared sheltered-in-place experience that we are all going through and to learn from it. Feel free to share back.

And in conclusion, if I have learned anything from my own and from guiding others through theirs, a midlife crisis is an opportunity for renewal out of which we come out living in a more fulfilling, authentic, connected and aligned way with the life force around us. So let’s step out and renew our life streams and the ones of the planet!

Warmly,

Anne-Marie

Resources

What Can The Coronavirus Teach Us? Bill McKibben (The New Yorker)
”Above all, I think, a physical shock like COVID-19 is a reminder that the world is a physical place. That’s easy to forget when we apprehend it mostly through screens, or through the cozy, contained environments that make up most of our lives. We seem to have a great deal of control, right until the moment that we don’t have any. Things can go very, very wrong, and very, very quickly. That’s precisely what scientists have been telling us for decades now about the climate crisis, and it’s what people have learned, from Australia to California, Puerto Rico, and everywhere that flood and fire has broken out. That planets get sick slightly slower than populations do—over a few decades, not a few weeks—doesn’t change the basic calculation.”

Coronavirus and the climate crisis- Common causes and shared solutions- Josh Karliner (Medium)
”As I began to sort through the multiple layers of this connection, in conversations with colleagues and in brief moments of thought as I scrambled to make sure my own family was safe, I began to organize the coronavirus-climate crisis convergence into four key areas:
Common causes: How habitat destruction leads to both climate change and pandemics.
Co-morbidity: How climate change deepens the impacts of pandemics like the coronavirus and vice versa.
Health inequity: How our health systems are unprepared for climate change and the coronavirus, making the most vulnerable even more so.
Systems change: Solutions for both climate justice and health equity: resilience, mitigation and leadership.”

The Coronation- Charles Eisenstein
“Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal, or whether we there might be something we’ve seen during this break in the routines that we want to bring into the future.”

Coronavirus: ‘Nature is sensing us a message’, says UN environment chief (The Guardian)
“There are too many pressures at the same time on our natural systems and something has to give. We are intimately interconnected with nature, whether we like it or not. If we don’t take care of nature, we can’t take care of ourselves. And as we hurtle towards a population of 10 billion people on this planet, we need to go into this future armed with nature as our strongest ally.”

Self-Reflection: Renewing Life Streams

1. What new routines that sustain your wellbeing, the wellbeing of your family, workplace, community and the one of the planet did you adopt during COVID-19? List as many as possible per category.

2. Which of these routines do you want to bring into the future? List at least one per category. Make it a SMART goal. (SMART: Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-bound)

3. Which practices that do not sustain your wellbeing, the wellbeing of your family, workplace and of the planet do you want to stop?

4. What else did you learn during these times that you want to continue to bring forward?

5. What capacity did you develop during this pandemic that you can carry forward?

6. Which capacity do you need to start or continue developing to better ride the next crisis?

Poem: Clearing by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself to this world

so worthy of rescue.

Seasonal Contemplative Walks:
May 9 in Portola Valley Canceled

Despite some relaxation of the shelter-in-place ordinances in San Mateo county, I am canceling the May 9th walk in Portola Valley.

Please continue to check the events calendar to see the status of any of the walks or email me directly at annemarie@designingyourlife.coach with your questions.

Free Coaching Sessions Extended Again, to End of May