Life AC (after COVID) – Join me in crafting an intentional life

We are over the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic (I hope). It has impacted us all personally and professionally. How are you? What has changed? How have you adapted? Are you still feeling discombobulated? Or happy with your life – personally? Professionally?

For me, the pandemic accurately illustrated the idea of “illusion of control”; the tendency most of us have for overestimating our ability to control events. I started 2020 with a clear plan for my life for the coming 3 years so, as a Victorian, I was naturally blindsided by the impacts of repeated lockdowns and the imposed restrictions on my personal freedom, choice over my daily activities and the way I worked. COVID reinforced John Lennon’s view that “life is what happens while you are busy making other plans”.

For many of us the past 3 years have been about letting go. For me, this has meant letting go not only of control of my daily life activities but also letting go of many things I held dear to my heart; my parents died in residential care at the height of the pandemic; my younger sister was moved to residential care then died last year. Residential care “lock-ins” meant the final year or two of their lives were devoid of genuine contact; something I found distressing. I sadly let go of a couple of job contracts with organisations I was keen to work with as I won’t work with bullies. Just as sadly I have let go of a couple of friendships realising our values no longer aligned. Finally, I had to let go of my professional aspirations as COVID restrictions made the depth development work I love to do was too risky to conduct in a face-to-face setting. In the ambiguity and uncertainty COVID imposed I lost my capacity to live my life intentionally, to approach life with a clear sense of purpose. Within this context it was the death my younger sibling that confronted me with the brevity and fragility of life. How much productive time do I have to do what I want to do? To contribute to my family and my community? To breathe in the air of a rainforest, amble through the bush, to sit on a beach and watch the sun colour the sky gold and pink as it drops below the horizon? To live life intentionally before old age – should I indeed achieve it - and frailty stripped me of my personal freedom and dignity.

And so, at the start of this year, with the worst of COVID behind us, I knew I had to do something to re-launch my life. I found myself repeatedly reciting the words REFLECT, REST and RESET. These three words capture the essence of Dr Adam Fraser’s book The Third Space (click the link to hear Adam Fraser explain the Third Space). The book isn’t about major life transitions; it’s about the hundreds of daily, moment to moment transitions we make as we shift between our roles and tasks. Yet the concept seemed just applicable to the major life transition I knew I was in. Consequently, in February I decided to leave a job and create my own Third Space. I wanted to REFLECT on my experiences over recent years, to REST and try to recover from my perpetual feelings of exhaustion, and to RESET – to start afresh.

I also found myself thinking about the wisdom contained in the Harvard Business Review article by Professor Henry Mintzberg, Crafting Strategy (click the link to read this seminal management article). Mintzberg proposed strategy is both deliberate and emergent requiring strategists to pivot in the light of new information or emerging phenomenon. Accepting the strategy is both deliberate and emergent challenges us to balance the tension between being committed to a plan and yet remaining flexible and open to adapting our plans in the light of new developments – be it in business, or life.

In the process of my “RESET” I determined to pursue a long-held professional aspiration to work in beautiful surroundings offering clients programs that simply supported them to REFLECT, REST & RESET; to take time out of their pressured lives to think about what matters most to them in life now, to determine what changes they need to make and to have clarity of direction and action – a life strategy that feels right for their stage of life be they establishing their careers, re-evaluating a career, contemplating a transition to retirement, transition to parenthood or re-setting their lives after an adversity.

The title of Mintzberg’s article inspired a name for my new business Life Crafting Australia – a business I proudly launch with the intention of supporting my clients to craft a life strategy that taps into the best of who they are to live an exceptional life. If you find yourself re-evaluating your life and/or your career I’d be delighted to work with you and support you in the process. In the words of C.S. Lewis: “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”