Making Plans for After: Thinking Through Your New Year

As we look forward to 2021 improving with a vaccine roll out, we are also making plans for after.

In January, instead of making NEW new year’s resolutions, I’ve had the opportunity to pick up where I left off not in 2020 but in 2019.

What do you do when flexibility comes knocking?

When you’re not flexible you get stuck, you panic, or you shut down. Flexibility asks you to  adapt, find some grit, and face the barrier head on.

At the end of the summer of 2019, my family and I were headed for one last vacation before the school year started and I started my new business. The week before our trip my husband’s doctor called and gave him the news no one ever wants to hear, “You have a brain tumor.”

Our world changed and my plans of starting work in the fall stopped dead in their tracks.

We went on vacation anyway, and I’m not really sure we actually enjoyed it. However, the proverbial change of scenery was welcomed.The day after Labor Day was my husband’s surgery, which was not only the beginning of the school year but also the start of a long recovery.

I talk a lot to my students about being flexible. In fact, flexibility is one of eleven executive functioning skills identified by neuroscientists. But in the fall of 2019, I had to really lean in and tell myself that “life happens” and to accept that I was experiencing a delay not a hard stop. 

How do you persist through continued setbacks?

We often talk about persistence in conjunction with grit. In other words, persistence asks you to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on the horse. Instead of mastery, it’s simply about sustained effort. 

And I had no idea how much I would rely on this skill when I decided to redouble my efforts and go after my 2019 goals at the start of 2020. Because right after that declaration, the pandemic hit, the world spun around, and my year became consumed with helping our daughter finish high school online. 

I was already having a little self-doubt and wondered if all of this was somehow a sign that my career plans were just not for me. After all, my plan was to help people improve their executive functioning skills when meanwhile I felt anything but focused and motivated. 

After a little wallowing, I sat down and started soul searching. Eventually, it came to me. I needed to get organized. I needed a plan. 

Here are the first 3 things I did.

1-I cut myself some slack.

For me that meant to stop listening to the critical voice inside my head that said, “You can’t do this, it's too overwhelming, and this will never happen. Getting caught up in our emotions is not only unhelpful but it stops us from getting started, causes us to lose focus, and keeps us from finishing things.

2-I made a plan.

I created a plan that was possible, built on all the work I had already done instead of a pie-in-the-sky resolution. After all, I’d completed my executive functioning accreditation on the Sklar method. I’d finished a course with Landmark College focused on online learning for students with learning disabilities. And that was just my formal training. I also had the 20+ years of parenting two children with learning differences. 

So, I started right where I was—with understanding the effects of learning online and from there to create a plan to make it easier for students to learn. Traditional coaching meant meeting with students in person, but with the pandemic that was no longer possible. So in order to help them, I would have to dive into technology too. 

I didn’t really know how to zoom but I was sure I could learn. And that wasn’t the only innovation I would need to make. Rather than a typical weekly meeting, why not see kids more regularly for shorter periods of time, 3-4 days a week? In many ways, our meeting format needed to adjust to what we understand about executive functioning and online learning. The shorter meetings would allow me to coach students through new concepts that we could repeat daily. As John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and author of bestselling Brain Rules, says “Repeat to remember. Remember to repeat.” 

3-I asked for help. 

Asking for help and advocating for yourself is hard to do. And it turns out to be one of the life skills I teach kids when we work together. But asking for help was something that helped me stay on track. I redoubled my efforts by focusing on my writing and business plan with my business coach, continued working with my mentor in education, and checked in with friends and family for outside support and encouragement. Perhaps most importantly, I listened to those that loved and supported me.

4-I did a lot of self-care. 

This practice not only kept me busy during the pandemic but prepared me for that day when I had my first student. I made a list of all the things that made me feel good and did at least one every day. For me, that meant walking more with my dog, reading books, knitting, and contacting friends on a regular basis by text, call, whatsapp, or FaceTime. 

I’m so glad I didn’t drill down on all those things I was going to do. I wouldn’t have been ready. And might not have even started. Cheers to all us who are able to just get started—even if that means publishing your New Years blog in late January.