Connection, hope, and next steps in times of Virus

This has been a tough week for most humans.

Many of you have had to make the hard decision of letting some of your people go, scaling their hours back, or putting their projects on hold.

Workplaces have completely transformed in the space of a week.

For the companies who are able to keep going, business as usual, isn’t really as usual – with masses of people suddenly required to work from home.

What does that mean for us? How do we lead our humans so that they feel less isolated, less worried?

How do we keep their motivation up? How do we keep them inspired in a time where people have no idea what to expect next?

This is an unprecedented time. No one knows what the next few months will look like.

What the new normal will become.

But the one single thing that the world still has in common is a deep human need for connection.  The desire that we have to be listened to be someone else, to be held by someone else and just plainly to feel as though we matter is one of the deepest human desires.

Our desire to connect crosses cultures, languages, mindsets, addresses, sexual preference, religions, age and speaks to the deepest part of who we are, to significantly connect with another human.

Our situation currently is rapidly (daily) providing fewer options for us to connect at least in a face to face manner.  

Even my 15-year-old son is saying ‘how do I go to school if I can’t hug my friends’.

The human need for connection through touch is well researched and the many benefits of being able to connect this way are popular and useful.  However, in this environment, we are being asked to reduce our connection to a person who is at the closest 1.5 metres.

This then poses the question, how do we make sure that we get all of the deep levels of benefits of human connection in a largely technical way?

Firstly, it raises the values of family.  We have always valued our families, but now there are some additional reasons to connect strongly with your own immediate family than what there ever has been in the past.

Social Media is the other obvious tool that we can use.  This should be used sparingly, monitoring our time on our devices and putting some clear boundaries in place to ensure that the news is not taking over our lives.

Connecting with ourselves through mindfulness, meditation, prayer and other reflective methods is most important in this time.  Learning to go inwards and feel empowered to make responsive choices rather than reactive hunches is more critical in this time than ever.

We can choose what, when, where, how and why we put content into our minds and heads.  

We can make choices that support us and help to connect, or we can make choices that brainwash us into thinking there is only bad in the world, which is not good for our mental health.

We have much more control regarding how we connect with others than what we think.  

If we continue to focus on what we can do and operate in our circle of control, then we are likely to ride these waves successfully, no matter what is thrown at us.

I know these times are hard – they’re like nothing we’ve ever had to deal with before.

I encourage you to find ways to come together, to support each other – your family, your friends, your colleagues, your customers.. everyone you interact with.

At Being More Human, we’ll be providing support to our corporate clients through our social media, blog and our newsletter.

We’ve also put together an additional resource to help your business continue to thrive in today’s circumstances and lead your team to be as productive and as efficient as possible in these changing times.

We know working from home is going to be challenging for your workers and difficult for your leaders to manage, so want to make sure you have the tools you need to stay productive and efficient at this time.I invite you to join us at Thriving Humans Club – an online resource for businesses owners, leaders, entrepreneurs and workers committed to keeping the momentum going in business and life.