Connecting with people we love and care about via Zoom no longer has the same allure as it did in March when many of us enjoyed the novelty of hosting virtual family check-ins and coffee dates with friends.
As the pandemic drones on, so does the increase in depression, anxiety, loneliness and a whole host of other mental health issues. It turns out that our need for physical touch and meaningful, face-to-face human interaction is paramount to our ability to be resilient and maintain our mental stability.

Have you ever wondered how some leaders, who undoubtedly have an overflowing workload, still find time and energy to enjoy life with family and friends or engage in their favorite hobby or sport? They typically are the same leaders whose people clamored to be on their team, consistently obtain profitable business results and have enviable levels of employee and customer satisfaction ratings. Who are they and how do they do it?
They are leaders committed to, and intentional about, being less transactional and more transformational in their day-to-day interactions.

Throughout life, some of my best memories were the times I spent hanging out under the stars. I have sweet memories of childhood sleepovers in my parent’s back yard, big sky evening vistas in Montana, and wilderness white water rafting adventures with friends camping along the western rivers of our country. The magic of the night sky fueled my curiosity and imagination.
My knowledge of astronomy is minimal, but my pride in being able to identify the Big Dipper, the North Star and the Milky Way is solid. I know the Big Dipper. To this day, the first thing I do when I walk out at night is look up to see if I can find that one thing I know. There is comfort in the knowledge it is always there and that I can see it.

Many types of birds make annual migrations, necessary for their access to food and breeding grounds. The distance record for these massive survival journeys belongs to the arctic tern, who flies a wandering path of 40,000 or more miles roundtrip from the northern Arctic to Antarctica yearly.
Migrating through this time of COVID, and all the challenges it brings, can feel like the arctic terns’ adventures. We keep flying without really knowing when or where we might land.

We have rolled into the sixth month of the pandemic and all that brings with it.
For many in front line care or leadership positions, the past few months have been especially challenging, and there’s no end in sight. We talk about defining a new normal, but what that might look like keeps shifting on us. After all the adaptations, uncertainty, and losses of innumerable varieties, we’re hearing that people are hitting walls of deep fatigue.

It all begins with an idea.