For those of you who have been listening from the beginning, thank you for waiting. I’ve been gone for a little while and I’ll be explaining that during the episode, but first, I wanted to make some announcements. I love creating this podcast and would love to make it even better. In order to do that, I’ve decided to take it down to once a month. As you may have noticed from the title of the episode, things are shifting for everyone, myself included.

This podcast was at one point one of my greatest priorities, but now I’ve added others to the list that require much more time and dedication on a day-to-day basis. That being said, I want to continue sharing personal stories, lessons, and tips about living with empathy with all of you. But I also wanted to do it in a way where I was sharing more of myself. As a teacher, I’ve always strived to model what I teach my students. If we’re talking about having a growth mindset, for example, of stretching yourself to do something you may not feel confident in and could take you some time to grasp, I’ve got to give an example of that in my own life.

With so many of us going through life altering changes, I wanted to wait and release an episode when I had navigated the shifts of my own life, share my mindset of what I was going through with those changes, and break down how you could adopt some of those strategies to help you along your 2020 path. Now that I’m almost on the other side of things, I knew it was time to get back on here and reconnect with all of you.

Last Saturday, I was standing in my brightly lit kitchen, drinking my café con leche in my doggie mug I was gifted at Christmas, and I thought to myself, “Had I known we’d be in a global pandemic for nearly all of 2020, I would’ve made the effort to go out on NYE”. And then I thought to myself, “Can’t change the past! But I can still change the course of my future”. Many of us right now have probably had similar thoughts. We think back to all the times we groaned about having to get up to go to the gym, getting invited to go out on a Friday night after a long week at work and just wanting to Netflix and fall asleep, or all of those chats with friends we kept pushing back because our schedules just didn’t coincide.

By now, you may have realized what has been imbalanced in your life. I hope that many of you have started creating a roadmap for how you want to proceed forward in your life with more joy, love, laughter, and play. I especially hope, given the many episodes I’ve done on this podcast about friendship, that you’ve evaluated what type of friend you want to be and the type of friendships you have in your life. Recently, I’ve been thinking of what all of these shifts mean to the collective. Some of the spiritual people I follow have called it “the Great Pause” and that’s true to a certain extent because there are still many things happening and moving. So, I’ve decided to call this period “The Great Pivot”.

Collectively, we are shifting in the way we do things. That’s really the most general way of putting it. For some, this may be a pretty dramatic upheaval in your life if you don’t like change or lean into change. For others, it may have been a welcome change. Maybe you wanted a slowdown or a chance to go inward and make time for the millions of thoughts swirling around in your head at any given moment. For one thing, collectively, we are learning what being in our own energy is like and what it changes in our environment when we engage with others.

We are entering a new stage of life. And I say with great compassion and empathy that the changes that may be positive for some, may be challenging and life altering for others. And so, I say with great trepidation that I do not speak for anyone’s experience, but my own. And the things I will share with you today are how I’ve been navigating these turbulent waters of uncertainty and frustration. I also acknowledge the great privileges I have in that. For example, many who know me know that at the start of the global health crisis, I had an unexpected out-of-state move. In that situation, I was incredibly fortunate that I was able to stay with family up until just a few weeks ago. Not everyone has that built in system of support and it’s good to remember that there are struggles MANY people are facing that we cannot see or don’t fully understand.

1. Taking it back to 2019 – For those of you who have been following along, you might remember that during the last few years I had taken a break from teaching, been coaching people, and doing a lot of inner work. In 2019, I was…

   1. Centered around undoing programming from childhood – being afraid of disappointing others or getting caught up in societal expectations for who I should be.

   2. Focusing on my relationships

   3. Lots of curious learning & going back to school

2. Spain, forever in my heart – For years, I yearned to be back in Spain. It didn’t matter what I was doing, I was just happy to be there. That was the plan, until it wasn’t.

   1. January 2020 ≠ August 2020

   2. Desire for stability & community

   3. Societal changes, structural changes, & the need for innovative individuals

3. The Steps I Followed to Pivot in a New Direction

   1. Writing my Personal Mission Statement

      1. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

   2. Going back to teaching

      1. 2020’s need for teachers with an understanding of social-emotional learning, anxiety, & strategies for coping with stress.

      2. Learning curve for EVERYONE

   3. My 2020 motto: Surrender & Evolve - What do I need to surrender? How do I need to evolve?

      1. Implementation time – Putting into practice all of the things I’ve learned.

      2. Take the long term approach - How can I set myself up for success in the long term?