A New Normal

From the time I was born until I was four, I was an only child. I had a good life, being the center of attention and my parent’s first child. Then something awful happened, at least from my perspective at the time. My little brother was born. When he came home from the hospital, my first question to my parents was “When will things go back to normal?!?” I was quite happy being the center of attention and this new little fella was messing up my sweet life! While I expected my parents to tell me that things would be back to normal very soon, they instead told me we were going to have a “new normal” from now on. There was no going back to life before my brother.

So Much Change

When COVID hit, so many things changed. The world shut down, many of us lost loved ones. Relationships were strained. Businesses experienced wild swings in revenue, for some it was growth, but for many it was loss. We argued endlessly about the right answers for the immediate problems we were all facing. The world was in upheaval like few times in history.

We Can’t Go Back

Now that we’re mostly on the other side of the pandemic, which again is debatable depending how you define it, it’s fairly common today to hear people talk about things getting “back to normal.” When will things be the way they were? Let’s go back to the movies. Let’s go back to the office. We need to start up all the things that were shut down.

The problem with that approach though is that when things happen, they can’t unhappen. We can’t go back to a time when our society hasn't experienced a world wide pandemic. We can’t go back to never having debates about masks, vaccines, freedom, discrimination or the hundreds of other issues that came to light.

Our New Normal

What do we do instead? I believe it’s time for us to define our new normal. We need to throw off the ideas of the past and really stop to consider what’s working and what’s not working. In the business world this might mean asking the question - does driving to an office really make sense for our team? Is a remote setup better? Can we find ways to be more inclusive of all types of people through a remote first approach? How can we structure our business so that it takes advantage of the new ways of working, rather than seeing the changes as a detriment? What else can we rethink, redo or change to take advantage of our new normal?

I believe it’s time for us to define our new normal.

On The Other Side

Thankfully I'm happy to say now that we’re adults, I’m incredibly thankful to have my brother in my life. He ended up not being nearly the disruption I first thought. My new normal turned out to be better than I could ever have imagined. Don’t be afraid to define a new normal. It just might turn out better than you expect.