(Thriving in the New Normal) Opportunities to seize in the PANDEMIC - rAVIN s. pAPIAH

SHOW NOTES
12th  AUGUST 2021
Season 6 – Show 6

Building YOU to BUILD your BUSINESS!

Season 6 – Thriving in the New Normal

Show  – Opportunities to seize in the PANDEMIC 
Theme – ARE YOU READY?
Talking Points – SEEING THE UNSEEN!

Welcome to the SIXTH show of Season 6 ‘Building YOU to BUILD your BUSINESS’ with Ravin Papiah!

Introduction
WELCOME to the SIXTH Show of Season 6!
If you are not Aware, You Are Nowhere! Ravin S. Papiah

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved – Helen Keller


AS USUAL, I am really excited for today’s show – Why? Because today I will AGAIN be talking about YOU! Yes, YOU! The Good YOU, The Amazing YOU, the Incredible YOU!

We have been talking about how the Corona Virus has been affecting our world for the past two years or so. And we have also been sharing with you about how WE can make a difference, how EACH ONE of us can make a difference!


IN TODAY’S SHOW, We are going to talk about the opportunities rather than the negative, dark side of the Corona Virus. The coronavirus pandemic has a lot of dark sides. Around the world, people are getting  sick and are dying, schools are closing, the healthcare system is overloaded, employees are losing their jobs, companies are facing bankruptcy, stock markets are collapsing and countries are having to spend billions on bailouts and medical aid. And for everyone, whether directly hurt or not, Covid-19 is a huge stressor shaking up our psyche, triggering our fears and uncertainties. But, no matter how serious and sad all of this is, there are upsides as well. According to Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, in his article in Forbes, there are 7 opportunities that the pandemic offers us.

Opportunities to seize in the PANDEMIC

SEGMENT ONE – MORE TIME!
In today’s overheated economy, time is often seen as the most valuable and scarce thing we have. Because of Covid-19 shows events like social gatherings and entertainment such as going to the theater, birthdays, cinema, restaurant, bar, sportclub, gym, music, festivals, concerts is no more of actuality. Suddenly, all of that is cancelled or forbidden AND this gives us significant amounts of extra time. And still, life goes on. This shows us how easy it is to clear our calendars. Obviously this doesn’t apply to the health-care sector and other crucial sectors, but beyond those it applies to a large majority of sectors.

The opportunity is that we can spend this time on other things—or even better, on nothing and enjoy the free time. Looking at rush to the crowded parks, garden centres and Malls whenever confinement is removed, many people seem to have a hard time with enjoying the free time, and DO SOME CLEANING OF THE MIND. Instead of enjoying the extra free time, they fill it immediately with other activities. To seize this first opportunity though, re-arranging how you spend your time and reserving time for nothingness is key. Not just during the crisis, but also after it, which bring us to our second opportunity: Reflect and reconsider!

Reflect and reconsider!

The fact that the coronavirus disrupts our day-to-day lives, provides an opportunity to reflect on things and to reconsider what we do, how we do it and why we do it. Things we took for granted—like going to the gym—are suddenly not possible anymore. Furthermore, many people have had to change their mode of working and work from home instead of at the office. This means that a lot of our routines are interrupted.

This offers a great opportunity to rethink our habits and routines and make changes. Now that you haven’t been able to go to the restaurant twice a week, commute 2 hours per day, hang out with your friends or go to a party every weekend, you can reflect on whether you really want to continue doing so after the crisis. The virus forces us to make changes to our daily life, that we might actually want to keep also after the crisis.

Questions for Reflections:

1. Are we happy with the WAY we were living BEFORE the pandemic?
2. Did we SEE what are the things we didn’t like about our pre-pandemic life?
3. Do we want to change those things we don’t like and don’t want to keep doing?
4. How can we bring these changes? Brainstorm ideas, discuss with closed ones, mentors or coaches

Keep listening to the Show…or download the podcast to learn more about Thriving in the New Normal….

SEGMENT TWO – Speed and Innovation
Many organizations suffer from slow procedures, complex bureaucracies and rigid hierarchies making organizational life less than pleasant. The coronavirus has forced many of them to break through these rigid systems and act instantly. Suddenly procedures can be skipped or accelerated, rules can be side-tracked and decisions can be made more autonomously without formal approval. And suddenly employees are allowed to work from home without direct supervision.

Covid-19 shows that, as soon as there is a strong enough stimulus, things can change. This leads to remarkable innovations. Not being allowed to open their doors, restaurants, for example, are shifting to delivery mode. And schools suddenly do much of the teaching and even some of the testing online. This brings the opportunity to create innovations now that can be maintained after the crisis. And it also can help to keep the current speed and innovation mode afterwards. All these show that human beings can think things and innovate quickly in crisis mode, but do we need crisis to then realise our gifts and use them?

Better Meetings
According to a previous article from Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, people spend up to 23 hours per week in meetings, half of which are considered a failure or waste of time. The current crisis has forced us to rethink how we deal with meetings. Because in many countries it is not allowed anymore to meet with a group of persons, many meetings are cancelled. And when they still take place they are mostly virtual and shorter.

As such, it provides an excellent opportunity for resolving one of the most disliked parts of organizational life. The technology for this is already present and mature for a couple of years, but the coronavirus triggers a sudden need for it. The real opportunity here is to make systematic changes so that meetings will be more effective, also after the crisis.

Questions to Reflect on:

1. Have our meetings pre-pandemic been structured, to the point and time-worthy?
2. Are there other ways of ‘meeting’ and ‘brainstorming’ that produce effective output that drives the organization forward?
3. Could meetings be re-invented? Could the hybrid methods be more productive for each person involved in the meeting?
4. How can we make meetings shorter but more focused and results-driven?

Keep listening to the Show…or download the podcast to learn more about Thriving in the New Normal…

SEGMENT THREE – Reconnect & Help
Challenging times offer a great opportunity for social bonding and other ways of connecting to and helping people. Of course, not being able to visit friends or family has increased isolation and feelings of loneliness in some cases. But the feeling of “we’re in this together” has also triggered interesting ways of connecting. Some of those have gone viral —such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies—but there are many small, local initiatives too to connect and help people who need it.

In the individualized societies many of us live in, this provides opportunities to reconnect and create more social coherence. Not only during the crisis, but also afterwards. This opportunity comes with a big caveat though. Parallel to these nice initiatives we also witness how far people go to protect themselves and their families. People hoard food, medicine,  toilet paper without thinking a second of others. However, while it triggers self-serving egocentric behavior too, the Covid-19 crisis does provide us the opportunity to reconnect and show our social side. What have you experienced post-pandemic that you didn’t live pre-pandemic? Did you connect virtually to global groups? Did you use more communication platforms to speak to families and friends abroad? Did you participate in global debates about covid19 and its aftermath? How did the Corona Virus positively affected your use of the digital world?

Cleaner environment

The virus caused a shutdown or dramatical decrease of industrial activities. Factories are closed or operate far below their capacity, road traffic has reduced radically and air traffic collapsed, and the lack of tourism has emptied the streets in overcrowded cities like Venice, Amsterdam and New York and Mauritius. While this may be bad news for most people and especially those working in the affected industries, this is also good news for our planet. Covid-19 causes a significant reduction in green house gasses and other air, water and land polluting outputs. In Venice this has allegedly led to dolphins return after just a couple of weeks (although some argued this to be a hoax).

Whether the particular example is a hoax or not is not so relevant. The fact is that the shutdown and lockdown of large parts of our economy is good for nature—at least on the short term. The opportunity this provides, is to keep parts of this in place also after the crisis to make long-term improvements. Along the line of the previous opportunities, the current crisis provides us an opportunity to reconsider our lives and reorganize it in a way that has less impact on our planet.

Questions to Reflect

1. How much did the thoughts of ‘going green’ attracted you?
2. Have you become more of a minimalist during the pandemic or have you been struggling to keep your habits unchanged?
3. Did you sense that you have been contributing to alleviate the carbon footprints during the past 18 months or so?
4. Are you more driven to add your contribution to keep the planet safe? 

Keep listening to the Show…or download the podcast to learn more about Thriving in the New Normal….


SEGMENT FOUR – Modesty and acceptance!

The final opportunity that the Covid-19 crisis offers, is a chance to create awareness for the moderate role we play on this planet and accept that things cannot always go as we want them to go. The Covid-19 pandemic is a global crisis that is unprecedented in modern peace time. We had other pandemics like SARS, but their impact was less substantial. And we had the 1973 oil crisis, but that was a man-made crisis. The coronavirus is not man-made and yet disrupts lives across the planet.

As such, the virus shows us that, no matter how well-planned and organized we are and no matter how much we live in the Anthropocene—the era characterized by significant human impact—we are not in control. One simple virus is disrupting everything. This offers a great opportunity. In almost every aspect of life we want to be in control. Whether it is health, airline safety or our calendars, we live in the illusion that full control is possible. The virus can help us create awareness that this is not the case. It provides an opportunity to take a more modest role and accept that many things are simply beyond our control.

Once again, the Covid-19 crisis has a large dark side. But as these seven opportunities show, it has positive sides as well. Since all seven opportunities require a quite fundamental change in how we approach the world, seizing them can take substantial time. In that sense, and if we keep on looking at the brighter sides of life, the longer the crisis lasts, the larger the opportunities are and the bigger the chances are of actually making changes to our deeply rooted habits and convictions.

Questions for reflection:
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1. What has been our FIRST reaction when the pandemic struck?
2. What are our thoughts, now that it is still very much present nearly two years after, not showing any sign of slowing down with the different variants developing?
3. What is your ‘mindset’ about living WITH the Corona Virus?
4. How do we prepare ourselves for sustaining in the continuous presence of the crisis?
5. Are we READY to change our way at looking at things and delve deeper within ourselves to find and develop the resilience mindset we need to cope with this on-going ‘enemy’ if you want to call it so?
6. Resilient, disciplined and action-oriented are the qualities that will help us thrive in this pandemic, and we do use them, we will grow into another level of human beings, a kind who can challenge ANY sort of crisis that comes our way – that’s our DNA!

Keep listening to the Show…or download the podcast to learn more about Thriving in the New Normal…


CONTACT DETAILS :

Name of Host : Ravin Souvendra Papiah
E-mail : plcjmleadership@gmail.com

1. Websites :  https://plcleadership.com
2. Websites : http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/ravinsouvendrapapiah/

Facebook Groups:

1. Life Defining Leadership: https://www.facebook.com/groups/542566133066245
2. The Mighty Public Speaker: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3350098431711678
3. Network Marketing Inspired: https://www.facebook.com/groups/369570674191112
4. Entrepreneurs Empowerment Academy:https://www.facebook.com/groups/293769725194787

Read my story from my Amazon No.1 best-selling book, Life Defining Moments from Bold Thoughts Leaders. Click here to request a FREE copy of my e-book: https://ravinspapiah.leadingthebest.com/sueb0001


See you Next Thursday (13 00 GMT – 17 00 Mauritius) for our Season 6 SHOW 7, where we look at “When YOU become the FIRE!”
 Until then, Keep tight! See you NEXT THURSDAY!

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