How to Begin Again With Style

The way to get ahead is to start now!

For many of us, spring 2021 is the moment when we slough off our long dormant season and enter the world again. We’ve had a year of down-time, spinning our wheels, planning our futures, hanging out with our bubbles and support groups, going nowhere, doing little … it would be easy to see this as a waste of time. But there’s another way to look at things.

We’ve had time to dream and time to scheme. A year to refine our visions and hone our ambitions. The world, so small for a year, has started to open up again, revealing its rich and powerful possibilities and inspiring us all to review our lives and get back into action. It has been a tough year but it’s time now to re-emerge. That’s the game of life!

Image credit: Marco Secchi

Of course we’ve had to give up on some of our plans, and maybe we haven’t kept to all our resolutions, but now we have a chance to start again. If we fell, or failed or didn’t follow through, the re-emergence of the wider world is a chance to rededicate ourselves to our dreams and our commitment to the planet. From climate change to Black Lives Matter, we’ve been shown just how much we need to change, and how our everyday actions can influence today… and the future.

We’ve also seen just how much change we can create when we work together. Mass vaccination programmes, community fridges, neighbourhood befriending schemes … the world has rallied around its weakest and most vulnerable citizens in ways that were unimaginable eighteen months ago. What can’t we achieve, when we really want to?

We never expected a year like the one we’ve lived through, and yet we’ve seen so many life-affirming, world-changing events, decisions and actions in the wider world and in our own intimate surroundings. Many of us are feeling grateful and inspired by the chance the pandemic has given us to grow, to become stronger, more empathetic and more aware of both need and possibility in our communities.

If we lost track of our ambitions or fell off the wagon of our good intentions, it’s time to start again.  We fail, we fail better, we learn, we succeed.

Hundreds of thousands of businesses had to pivot their annual plan when COVID-19 struck, millions of individuals had to give up their ambitions and hunker down for the duration.

We’re learning that as a species and a society we can cope with almost anything and that’s a clear hint that as individuals we can also surmount a difficult year, learn from it, and maybe even benefit from adversity. So if you feel like a grizzly emerging from a cave, shaky and blinking in the spring sunshine, why not see it as the chance to begin again, to renew your commitment to yourself and the world, and start to make the changes that you’ve always dreamed of.