There’s a game that people seem to enjoy playing. It’s a game that means they don’t have to face reality, adapt to situations, or take responsibility for their own lives. It’s a game that allows people to cling to their image of themselves and of what ‘normal’ should be. It’s the Blame Game.

The Blame Game becomes a bit of a national sport in times of crisis. People always find someone, other than themselves, who must be actively responsible for a situation. This way, they can sit in righteous anger and refuse to see a crisis from different perspectives. They can remain blind to the lessons to be learned. They can ignore their own role in creating or aggravating the issue.

Because it’s clearly someone else’s fault.🤦🏽‍♀️

The Blame Game is the easy, reassuring road. In times of crisis, it’s so simple to shift our gaze outwards and blame others, usually completely irrationally. It means we don’t have to examine ourselves and our priorities with a critical eye.

At the moment, ‘Asians’ are being blamed for a global pandemic as witnessed when Michael Lofthouse, former CEO of Split8, was seen on camera barraging an Asian family with racist rants. Jason Wood, former CEO of Actionable Insights, recently resigned after he, too, was caught on video hurling several racially charged, anti-Middle Eastern comments and slurs. All because he refused to wear a mask indoors. And, of course, we all know what our black brothers and sisters consistently deal with.

#Love, #Kindness and #Compassion are the difficult paths, the rewarding paths, the healing paths. When our sense of ‘normal’ is threatened, this is the path that refuses to succumb to fear and anger. It’s the path that sees the suffering of others and wants to make it better. It’s the path that sees that we’re all in this together and we’re stronger as One. It’s the path that expands our #perspective so that we can act for the greater good.

In times of crisis, Love and #Kindness are what will help us create a better, more #united, more diverse tomorrow. As a nation, I wish we could stop pointing fingers and start opening our hearts.

Resilience is having the emotional tools to receive all the depth and range of transient human experiences, without losing touch with our perspectives or core grounding values. These tools, which include #hope, #mindfulness, #self-awareness, #self-compassion, #faith, #determination, #willpower, and #far-sightedness, to name just a few, are muscles that can be trained by conscious choices and decisions. 

Every day, we can actively choose to become more resilient in the face of challenges, thereby empowering ourselves to be in flow with what the world has to offer.

#Resilience works on a personal level, helping us as individuals to stay rooted and #grounded through the storms, but it also functions on a societal level. 

Societies can be easily threatened, destabilized or torn apart, or they can be resilient in the face of physical and social challenges. Of course, much of societal resilience depends on access to food, water, education and employment, but it also relies heavily on its parts. 

Resilient societies are built by people who are grounded enough to take change and difficulty in their stride, without turning against each other. 

Resilient societies are built by people who widen their perspectives to take into account the experiences of others, so that they play positive roles in them. 

Resilient societies are built by people who can look honestly at themselves, and work to make themselves better. 

Resilient societies are built by resilient people. And resilient people are built with compassion and hope. 

So let us, as a society, flex the muscles of compassion and hope as we navigate the lessons that 2020 is offering us.

A growth mindset is the most valuable tool we can mobilize, both as individuals and as a society. It’s what enables honest #reflection, authentic dialogue, genuine #transformation and sustainable change. A growth mindset is our ability to transform ourselves and our communities into representations of our core values. It’s our greatest superpower.

That’s not to say that it’s easy, though. To grow, we must be able to honestly look back at where we’ve come from, and we must be able to fearlessly and compassionately name our ugly bits, our mistakes, our faults and flaws. This way, they give us the power to transform, rather than us giving them the power to hold us back. 

Even more terrifying, we must be open to how others perceive our behaviors, how others are impacted by us, and what our peers see in us that we might be blind to. Listening with an open heart; accepting others and ourselves; giving ourself the permission to be ‘not-perfect’ so that we create the space to grow into who we want to become: this is the basis of the authentic dialogue between us and the world that is going to help us transform.

The key, as always, likes in the #Ego. The Ego has no compassion, it only condemns. So if it were to truly listen, it would have to turn its condemnation onto itself, and that would be unacceptable. To prevent this, it gets defensive and angry, fogging up the mirror so we can preserve the flattering view of ourselves.

To let go of the Ego is to let go of condemnation. It is to embrace #compassion, for others and for ourselves. And once we have compassion for ourself, for the influences that made us, for our flaws, mistakes and ugly bits, then we can truly look at them, name them, and transform them.