WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?

What is a speaker's worst nightmare? Ask ten people and you'll get ten different answers.

All of us who feel fear when we're asked to get up to speak harbor some kind of worst case scenario, the thing we dread happening that will let the audience know just how incompetent, unprepared, or uncomfortable, we are. That same sort of fear is plaguing us these days when we face the new normal… life under the threat of the coronavirus.

Where does the fear come from? Usually it’s the feeling that we are not in control. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know exactly what we’ll do if we’re suddenly faced with a challenge we’ve never quite had to deal with before. Can we envision life devoid of our normal human contact? And if we can envision it, because we have to, how will we handle it?

Our choice of response depends upon our evaluation of the nature of our new reality. If we're prepared for the unexpected, we can judge whether to give a humorous or serious response, whichever is appropriate at the moment. Can we find something to laugh about in our day to day reality?

One way of facing the difficulty of feeling out of control is to seriously try to look at the gift in the situation. What gift? How can there be a gift in a situation where people can sicken and die just from standing next to each other?

One gift that is appearing everywhere you look is that people are learning new ways of communicating with each other. Families and friends check in on each other daily via Facebook, email, telephone, or other technologies. Across the globe, we’re contacting business associates, friends and family in other cities and countries. We’re contacting relatives and acquaintances weekly, biweekly or monthly that we might not have thought of reaching out to for a year or more. We’re using our communication skills to re-establish and cement bonds with everyone we know because we’re literally all in the same boat.

We’re all enduring this horrible time together. We’re asking how we can help each other and going out of our way to do so. Our sense of community, perhaps, has never been stronger.

Deciding how to respond is to take control. It’s our job to demonstrate that this is our turf, our venue, and we are in charge! Within the parameters of doing what is required to keep safe, we get to choose our individual behavior. Our most effective response will be to find new ways of communicating our belief that there will be a better tomorrow. While it may seem like uncontrollable nature is in charge, it isn’t. We are!