I didn't choose them; I heard them at a Gallup webinar last spring: Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope. The Gallup folks suggested businesses use each one to guide a pandemic response. Thinking Classroom had just lost 90% of its income and its biggest client (out of the blue; not related to COVID) and didn't qualify for any government support. The advice was timely and meaningful.
Those four words saved the business; enabled it/me/us to look outwards instead of in, to look beyond close family, beyond extended family, past neighborhood, city, nation and out to our irrevocably connected world. Work shifted online, Zoom School started and food could be placed on the table.
May I humbly pass on these four words to you as guidance for the end of 2020 and support for the challenges and changes of 2021.
Trust
Choose who you trust and explore your trust in them. The politician, the scientist, the journalist; the mathematician, the social commentator, the influencer; the friend, the family member, the child. Pause and think before you judge; before you form and crystallize an opinion. And then consider yourself; your integrity, your intent, your actions. Find the trustworthiness there. If you see it, others will too.
Compassion
The pandemic has laid bare our values, beliefs and personalities. It's accelerated and amplified what was already present. Maybe you've been shocked by behaviours of friends and family? By their interpretation of social rules and its difference to your own understanding? Maybe you've been empowered by extreme acts of love and care, seen first hand or in the media. Maybe you need to cut someone a little slack, or have it cut for you. Maybe walking a mile in someone else's moccasins might not be such a bad idea right now.
Stability
When everything changes what remains? What is left, left for you? An object? A memory? A person? Where is your anchor? Seek out the music, the poetry, the film and TV, the books the photographs, the recollections and the words which, for you, are timeless. Build your own stability from this raw material then help others to do the same.
Hope
This will pass. Maybe not when or how you want it to, but it will pass. Hope is not about wishing for this to end or about demanding a return to normal. Hope is a quiet, almost silent confidence that's heard once the noise fades. Hope is a state of being, a way of believing in the present just as much as in the future.
Trust, compassion, stability, hope. Please pass them on.
