August 6, 2020

Are you grappling a bit with this new normal? Blue Tiger Tips are here, to help you navigate this Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous (VUCA) and ever shifting environment.

We hope you will find just one small, actionable item that you can do each day to give yourself, and your team, a way to stay emotionally connected and as healthy as possible in all ways physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Compassion is the Way Forward – It seems like even the easy things are difficult and the idea that we can just gut it out and push forward may be waning. Many of us have come to realize that holding our breath until we are through the tunnel is not a sustainable means of coping. It is time to learn to breath while we are still moving through the passage because it turns out we don’t really know how long it is after all. There are many different emotional reactions to driving through a tunnel without knowing where the end is; anger, frustration, grief, confusion, melancholy, fear, humor, and others. I’ve witnessed a number of different intense emotional reactions on phone calls and on Zoom lately indicating that people are stressed to a level that is nearly untenable. It is telling that every section of the “Wheel of Life” (You can take a quick visual assessment here) is impacted for each one of us to varying degrees. We need heavy doses of compassion for ourselves as well as our coworkers right now.

For Yourself: Do you have a daily practice that helps you build tiny bits of resilience into each day? A 2-minute meditation practice, an afternoon walk, a delicious piece of candy, a morning journaling exercise, an hour on your calendar just for you? It’s imperative that we create the spaces that feed our joy, nourish the positive brain chemistry, and keep our batteries from becoming depleted.

For Your Coworkers: Are you recognizing emotions coming up in conversations, or maybe a larger sense of being disengaged, or checked-out? A compassionate action would be to offer a pause in a conversation and ask, “what might be most helpful to you right now?” It might be a reschedule of this planned conversation, a discussion about a more flexible work arrangement, or just a moment to acknowledge that things are really difficult and there are no easy answers. People are juggling more than we can even comprehend in any given moment right now, just a small compassionate pause can go a long, long way to connect and ground in the now.

Practice Letting Go -  I’d bet that most of us would agree that there is so much out of our control right now. Yet, I would posit that this is probably more of a truth all the time than we allow ourselves the power to recognize.  Most of life runs outside of our real control, but we fool ourselves into thinking that we do have jurisdiction over much more because that feels safer, more satisfying, and powerful. It causes me to wonder what would shift, alter, re-organize if we were to lean into the idea that now is no different than always, it’s just much more apparent. If most of what goes on day to day is out of my control, where could I center myself in a place of choice that gives me clarity and leaves me feeling empowered? Where are the areas that I have small choices to make? I can choose whether to have coffee or tea in the morning; I have control over whether I get up for that walk I promised myself; I get to decide where my boundaries are for working on the weekends, etc.

I can’t control if a loved one gets sick, yet I can choose how I’d like to respond after the initial emotions wash over me. Allowing myself the space to have that wave of emotions actually becomes a piece of what I can control – it’s normal and healthy to have emotions and if I let them work through me rather than trying to “control” them by blocking it, I will be in a much better position to respond with clarity rather than react.

Your Video Dose of Upliftment – This entry comes from the website "The Kids Should See This." More often than not, the grown-ups would love it, too! https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/kintsugi-court-victor-solomon-video

Please let us know if you find any of these to be helpful and share how you put them into practice. Also, if you have a tip to offer, let us know and we will include it in a future email or video.

We wish for you to find your special ways to thrive through this unprecedented time.

Michelle, Phil, Jaclyn & the Blue Tiger Leadership Team

May You Be Well –