"You don't find your voice in the calm. You find it in the storm!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Part 3 of my short 6-part series revisiting my archives. Writing my newest book meant rereading years of my own morning posts - and some of them took me straight back to moments I'll never forget. Today is one of those.
It's kind of wild that at the very moment I am typing this post, I have a pretty significant thunderstorm directly overhead. Karma!
Anyways....March 2020. Remember it?
Everyone was impacted. In my case, the meeting and event industry - my industry - evaporated in about ten days. Every event cancelled. Every stage went dark. A futurist with no audience and no idea, like everyone else, as to what next week would look like.
So what did I do? I kept writing. Every single morning, my Daily Inspiration post went like this:
"Life is 98% capitalizing on your optimism - and 2% managing your brief, small moments of panic!" (March 10, 2020)
"When your old reality is gone for a time, it's best to make a new one!" (March 20, 2020)
"Think of the future this way: we've just hit a great big 'Pause' button. We'll press 'Play' again..." (March 24, 2020)
"Truth! There are very few commodities in the world right now more precious than hope and optimism!" (April 3, 2020)
Here's what I understand now that I didn't fully understand then: I wasn't writing those posts because I had answers. I was writing them to find the answers. The discipline of showing up every morning of a crisis and putting one hopeful, useful thought into the world - that wasn't a performance of confidence. That was the manufacturing of it.
The companies that came through that era strongest did the same thing. They didn't wait for clarity to act. They acted their way into clarity - small daily decisions, made out loud, in the fog.
That's the thing about storms. You don't really know what you're made of, or what you sound like, until you're in one. And the fact is, I've written an entire book about what to do when the storms hit. Dance in them. And it all unfolded right here in my Daily Inspiration. Dancing in the Rain became the field guide to finding your voice when things get tough.
And when the next one comes - and it will - your voice will be there waiting.
If you exercise it now.