Hey everybody! I’m going to be recording a series of shorter podcast episodes that I’ll be issuing on Fridays every week. They’re a slightly different format from the longer format that I’m posting on Tuesdays, which are interviews with other architects. These are going to be perspectives. My perspectives on the things that I run into with my clients, issues that come up, thoughts in my head, just a shorter brief of what’s going on in my world. And some tips, tricks, things that I’d like to share with you.

Lately I’ve had a lot of clients who have been coming to me because of the circumstances of the pandemic and lockdowns and shutdowns and furloughs, and a slew of different circumstances that have been affecting all of us. And they come to our coaching calls feeling really overwhelmed and sort of like they’ve got their head down. They’re just plowing forward. A lot of the sense of what I hear from people is that they’re just in survival mode. They’re stomping out whatever fire seems to crop up right there in the moment, but they have no long range vision. They’re unable to sort of lift their heads up and look towards their longer goals. They’re all just working as hard as they possibly can to just get by every single day.

And this doesn’t happen to everybody just during pandemic times. It happens during regular life. What we might’ve called normal at one point. Where you’re overwhelmed, you’re focused on just getting through the day and it happens in the world of architecture especially. There are clients coming after you. There are project deadlines. There are crises that you have to stomp out. There are staffing concerns. There’s just all of the different issues that you have to deal with. And we find that oftentimes the overwhelm in the sense of, I just don’t know how I’m going to do this anymore – “I just have to make it through the day” is a super, super strong thing that’s going on for people.

So I want to give you five different tips, five Ninja tips on how to deal with that survival mode and how to broaden your event horizon. First things first is to simply stop. Simply just stop where you are. We are going pell-mell, running, running, running constantly all the time. And we don’t ever take the time to simply just stop what we’re doing and take stock of what’s actually going on in our life. So that’s the first tip is just stop where you are.

Second is to meditate, to visualize, to spend a little bit of time trying to get grounded and clear on what exactly it is that you want.

Which leads into the third point, which is commitment. What are you committed to in the long term? Not what are you committed to today – getting your laundry done – but what is the thing that you want in your life that you’re really committed to having? What’s the kind of life that you want to have? What’s the goal that ultimately you want to get to, even if right now in the moment you can’t quite see the path?

Once you’re clear on the commitment, the next step is number four, which is to actually create a plan, a series of steps, milestones, and goals that will get you to where you want to go.

And step five is take some action. Even the tiniest bit of action is going to get you moving towards that goal in the face of all of the other swirl and circumstances that are going on around you.

So, stop what you’re doing, meditate or visualize on what it is. Get yourself grounded and get clear on your commitment. Then put together a plan and take the smallest bit of action in the face of all the circumstances that we’re up against these days. It’s the greatest way for you to get really clear, focused and moving, regardless of circumstances, towards that thing that you want in your life.

So there you have it! Five tips for getting your head out of the sand, focusing on the long horizon and moving forward in the face of a pandemic and other crises that happen in life.

If you found this interesting, or if you’d like to know more about coaching and the work that I do, please join my community at www.blueprintforliving.coach. Until then, thanks for listening. I’ll see you all next week and make it a wonder-filled day. Take care!