Reinvent and Embrace the Suck

Reinvent the wheel and take action.

How many of you want to know how to navigate and reinvent through this crisis?

Who among you are starting to adapt?

Welcome to this blog entitled Reinvent and Embrace the Suck and my objective is to share and reveal to you my secrets on how I am reinventing myself.

My husband and I love the 80s and concerts of 80s bands. One Sunday afternoon in October. I was home surfing the net and I see an email announcing that A-ha and New Order who were scheduled to perform in Osaka and Tokyo in March. I was so excited! I rushed to buy tickets and so grateful that there were still some available for sale. The next hurdle were the plane tickets. Something nudged me to check our available miles and lo and behold, I had accumulated rewards miles just enough to cover our round trip ticket. I checked my husband's account and did the same.

February 2020 rolls in and news about a deadly virus in China makes waves. Event are getting cancelled and I was getting concerned. I asked Brian, my husband if we should still push through with the trip. We had ample time to think about it. We are able to cancel our bookings and have the miles credited back with no penalty incurred but we had to decide as soon as possible. Brian was already granted an approved vacation leave. So we flew out to make the most of it. Anyhow, should the concerts be cancelled then it would mean an opening in our schedule of six hours. We can easily fill in the time by visiting other places in #Osaka and #Tokyo and do other things with our time. So we did push through with the vacation and both concerts were cancelled as expected. I enjoyed a lot, we got to spend a lot of time together.

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Upon arrival, my elder son who was scheduled to graduate from Grade 12 handed me a circular about the schedule of their graduation ceremony. He then asked, “Will you and Dad be able to attend?” It was scheduled 10 days from the day we landed. The announcement clearly stated that all those who have traveled recently must undergo self-quarantine for two weeks. I could feel my son’s sadness and disappointment that we will not be able to. Eventually, the ceremony was moved to a later date and later on, cancelled. If only for that, we breathed a sigh of relief. How about you, what major events that you dreamed of attending got cancelled? Another one for us was the Alanis Morisette concert, but that is another story.

We are now in a VUCA world. “V” stands for for Volatile, “U” for uncertain, “C” for complex and “A” for ambiguous. We have never been in this type of a crisis before. I myself have gone through a stage of denial, worry and numbness about the pandemic. During our self-quarantine, our priority was to eat healthy, get a lot of sleep to enforce our immune system to make sure we will not be a victim to the COVID-19 virus. The times are volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous indeed. Even the governments were at a loss as to create and implement policies. The medical professionals became crucial front liners and heroes in their own right for exposing themselves and risking their lives to an invisible enemy to save many more.

Reinvention Triggers

I would attribute the rise of uncertainty to three factors:

1. Disruption in our "normal" everyday lives

2. Loss of human connection, as one of our basic needs is kept at a minimum with the use of masks and physical distancing

3. Limited resources or no emergency funds set aside in the event of a layoff or forced to take unpaid leaves.

Brian celebrated his 50th birthday with a surprise zoom party that I organized. I also came up with a video presentation where I personally asked his family and friends to shoot a birthday message for him. My elder son pitched in by editing the video. Some neighbors even baked a cake for him at that time that the bakeshops are closed with the lock down.

Reinvent and the 3E's

To adapt to the new normal and through personal reflections, I came up with three steps which I call the 3 E’s:

1. #Embracethesuck

I realized that there are certain things that I can control and the others, out of my control. Keeping this in mind, I sprung into action with so much acceptance of the current situation. I planned and organized Brian’s online birthday celebration for him to feel special. Our family walks every day at 5pm for an hour, our new habit. I studied stock market investing and organized my financial affairs.

2. Equip yourself

I signed up to be Zoom subscriber and oriented myself with relating with clients online. I kept abreast with the company updates regarding guidelines, deadlines and requirements. I joined a 21-day coaching program where I took lessons on coaching, online marketing and public speaking. My family also started with urban gardening by planting easy to grow vegetables such as pechay, eggplant, tomatoes, camote tops, beans, monggo, etc. I also volunteered in our Community Relations committee in the village where we raised funds to purchase rice and grocery items that we doled out to the neighboring barangays who needed assistance badly.

3. Execute

After the learnings, it was time to take massive action. I worked on my personal branding and optimizing my social media sites. I coordinated with my sons’ school regarding their distance learning framework. I enhanced my skills as much as I can by attending a lot of forums. I also took up a virtual assistance course with the FVA Consultancy where I learned about social media management and marketing, website creation, SEO, among others. Thank you to my Coach Ms. Julmar Grace Locsin, #TheFilipinoEye, FVA co-founder, owner and creator.

The two most important values I learned during this pandemic is creativity and gratitude. When I am creative, I am open to a lot of available opportunities. I realized that we don’t need much in order to survive. In fact, our needs are so little. Appreciation is the key to knowing that there is more than enough and that we are being well taken cared of.

I am embracing this #VUCA world now because it now has a different meaning for me.

Vision – Understanding – Clarity – Agility

In summary, I hope you got a lot of value in my sharing. As your trusted financial consultant, do let me know how can I help you in the areas of securing lives, growing wealth, helping business owners through referrals whereby we can dig into your particular needs and plan out solutions.

Luke 6:38

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.