On the grief we are feeling now (And the will to change.)

For a while I have wondered what exactly it is that I've been feeling, since, in barely a fortnight, this crisis changed the world as we know it. The emotion was hard to pin down. But as it has swirled around my body, I have slowly managed to grasp it's unfamiliar taste. 

It is grief.

We are mourning what we have lost-colleagues, revenue, dearly held projects. But, although we have lost much in the present, we are also mourning the future. The plans we had, the things we were going to do. The grief can overwhelm us. (It certainly paralysed me for a few weeks.) But while it's important to feel it and admit that we do. (It's nothing to be ashamed of.) We have reached the threshold when we must move on. Where we must plant new trees.

This is difficult, of course. For myriad psychological reasons. First, we have sunk costs. We have invested huge resources in these destroyed plans: time, money, the sweat of our soul. Something deep inside us tells us that we should just keep going, that we should wait it out, that nothing is lost at all. But we are deluding ourselves. Second, there is uncertainty. If we scrap our plans, then what is left? A void. We hate uncertainty more than futility, so we plow on. 

Third, and perhaps most potently, is our identity. We are what we do, so when we stop doing it who are we? It's a crushing existential question. This is one of the main reasons Covid has been so sapping of our emotional energy: it has not just worried us, it has erased us. We have been denied some of the key things that define who we are. So, again, we resist change. Carry on as before. Keep ourselves in tact.

Stephen Grosz is a psychotherapist and author of a wonderful book, 'The Examined Life.' Much of it concerns how his patients have dealt with change. In it, he writes 'There can be no change without loss.' And is this not true? We cannot change without losing our sunk costs, without losing our old vision of the future, without losing some of our identity. But Grosz says that if we are unwilling to lose some things, we risk losing everything. It is when his patients come to terms with this fact, when they can tell themselves a meaningful strory about their suffering, that they are released from it. They can finally change. 

This is the challenge we all now face. We must accept our loss.

I am an improviser. We perform comedy on stage, sketches basically, which we make up in the moment. These scenes carry on until someone in the improv troupe ends the scene: what we in the biz call a 'sweep.' Sometimes the scenes are wonderful. Sometimes they are dreadful. And which scenes are the easiest to sweep, do you think? The good ones. In the bad scenes, everyone is paralysed. They are watching a car crash and yet they don't want to end it, because the only thing worse than a disaster is an empty stage.

And yet a vacuum cannot exist except in Space. If we are brave enough to create a void new opportunities can fill it. Reinvention need not be a chore, in many ways it can be a second chance. 

So when we have accepted our loss, we must sweep the scene. Reinvention cannot begin without it.

One of the projects that I lost in all of this was the publication of my new book, 'Improvise!' It was due on May 7th, but has been pushed back to late August. It contains some practical and inspiring advice to aid your own reinvention. Sign up to my webinars or pre-order your copy here.