Pandemic Reboot! (tm), Redefining Possible

Redefining Possible:  Proven Strategies to Break Belief Barriers and Create Your New Normal, by Ron Alford and Dustin Hillis, Southwestern Books 2021

Two high performers share how they want to handle our anxieties, break down the problem, and move forward.  There is no telling exactly what specific challenges each of us now faces - could be unemployment, could be family pressures or tremendous health issues - its all bad and it won't just float away.  What Alford and Hillis show us is it that despite overwhelming days and nights, there are certain specific techniques that work. 

Let's look at  just one of the common anxiety responses, brain chatter.  How to clear the head and develop stronger focus?  Author Ron Alford tells a story of his famiiy crisis when, having put his life back together post divorce, everything was falling into place, until that one phone call.  His seven year old son Van had developed what looked like an allergic reaction to shellfish.  His face swelled and the treatments tried weren't working.  Van was suffering and frightened.  After a trip to Seattle Children's Hospital for tests, the answer came back worse than anything the family had expected - leukemia.  

Alford's life became a blur of hospital visits, decisions, and the pain of watching a lovely boy suffer.  Added to the sheer pressure of work demands, Alford found himself stretched beyond anything he had ever imagined.  But yet, he said "It soon became clear to me what I had to do to survive this crisis.  In the following months and years, I would need to truly embody what it meant to redefine possible in the face of hardship.  I decided to be the greatest example I could be of strength and focus for my kids."

There were times during this pandemic when waking up was like facing a cancer diagnosis - not many choices, a heavy feeling of doom lying over the morning, no escape.  But given that Alford decided to follow a hard-line approach to the crisis - when he could have fallen back into the impossibility of it all with ready-made excuses at his fingertips - we can learn from this.  Every hard lesson eventually shows other possibilities.  And in Redefining Possible we are offered a small number of very valuable tools - advice on how to develop unconditional confidence, methods to clear brain chatter, targeted affirmations to build positivity, ways to transform tough challenges into teaching tools, and ideas on dealing with the unexpected.  The pandemic has brought us to tough conditions we will be facing for years, perhaps decades into the future, and we need all the help - human and divine - we can get.

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com