Ep. 2: Thriving in COVID-19

All right, so today we're gonna be talking about COVID-19. And basically, we want to break down from our perspective, the ways that it's been impacting us. But we also want to address some kind of different perspectives that we have than what we've been hearing and First things first, when Kobe hit us a few months ago, our immediate thinking about it was, it's the flu. We're like, yo, like I actually had the flu this year. It took me out. This scenario is something that I could have never imagined that this would be the thing that takes us down. I mean, when you think about it, it completely shut down. Our financial infrastructure, our ability to earn and make money, our freedom, right, our ability to move it and do what it is that we want to do. And, and again, no one was expecting this, if we've never experienced anything, at least in our lifetimes. Yeah. And or our parents for that matter. Yeah. So I would say he wasn't ready. We definitely weren't ready. And I mean, I think now that it happened, many people are preparing themselves for something like this to happen again. Yeah. But, you know, I really, you know, I just want to give people a little bit of grace and say, like, you didn't know, what you didn't know, could happen. So, you know, we're experiencing difficulty or, you know, challenges right now, like, you really could not have planned for this. Yeah.

How COVID Forced Us to Face Our Truths

But also, I mean, I think that this was, this was a nice check. Yes. So I'd have to tell you that a lot of the things that we are seeing the people who are struggling the most the reason that they're struggling wasn't because of COVID. It's because we weren't sound in the first place. Exactly. For me, honestly, you know, I would tell you that I think that a couple things really hit home that you had to be taken care of in this one was, of course, your finances, understanding having an emergency fund being prepared for if things just didn't go the way that you wanted it to, to that point, even teaching us that for years. Right. So there's, I mean, so you could have been prepared, which you could not have known it would have been this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But But health. Health has been a big thing for me. In this I will tell you that. I slacked on COVID 2020. I realized that I actually had COVID before COVID hit and wait. While other people were complaining you couldn't go to the gym. I hadn't been to the gym in a while. So yeah, yeah. I mean, that was so real though. Like when everything really was starting to hit. And you know, this is my second year as an entrepreneur and full time entrepreneur. And, you know, I was really just, I finally understood that I did not have my stuff together. before. I mean, you know, I never really thought about it, right? I never really thought about it because I never had to think about it. But I did not write y'all. Listen, I didn't have my sole proprietorship set up. Like I didn't have a business bank account set up and I've been operating as a business for a year. So this really forced me to get all of that stuff together. Yeah. But yeah, it told me how out of whack my stuff was.

Healthy Relationships in COVID

Okay, so the one I wanted to mention too, is relationships. You cannot get around the fact that this forced us to be in close proximity. Yes. In all of our relationships, whether you're talking about spouses, children, I mean, friends, sisters, I mean, and even if you're single, if The way that you can interact with people I mean, I have tons on I'll have a ton of friends. A couple of my friends who are single, you know, they really been struggling single and alone during this I was gonna say so one of my friends has been putting weird weird video about weird videos video shoot me right now. But no like seriously, like some of my friends you know, we just video chat just to check in on people's mental health because you know, the time the extended amount of time alone can be so triggering for people. Yeah, definitely. So So yeah, so that that has definitely been one thing. It's forced me now I talk to my friends a lot more frequently now than I did pre COVID just checking in on each other. A lot of them are business owners. A lot of them have just you know, recently done some big life things. So just making sure that they're all right, make sure you know, they're checking in on me to know.

From Surviving to Thriving

And so I will tell you that my takeaway from this is that this was a reality check. The thing that COVID did the worse was show you, yourself. Yeah, it was it shows you about yourself. Like, yes, I will say 100% that's what it was for me. And when I realized that though, I decided to seize the opportunity to get everything together. I did too. I will tell you that I spent really the first month evaluating what it is that I really wanted. Was I okay, in different areas of my life, and then coming up with an action plan to fix it because a lot of areas weren't tight. They weren't tight. Yeah, I mean, I looked at my vision board that we did early when we do those was February. It kind of might have been in February. Well, anyways, we did our 2020 vision, vision boards. And I was supposed to map out everything that we wanted to do for 2020. And I looked at it and I was like, we have not made any. Yeah. And you know that reality hits you, and now you're spending all this time in the house, like, you know, you're really forced to think about these things. Yeah. I just want to mention that it's funny though, because I think that other people are thinking the same thing. If you pay attention to like, something that's important to me is like businesses and who's thriving and who's growing. And we were at Home Depot. Everybody is doing a home project right now. You know, we went to Home Depot on one of those like early weekends and like, first of all, I was only thing open. Everybody and their Mama was in there was club Home Depot. What? No club but I wasn't even there yet. But yeah, everyone's sitting in their house, looking at all the things that are broken. They have been avoiding doing for so long. And now they got to deal with that stuff. So yeah, definitely agree. It exacerbated the thing, the problems that were already in existing in existence, and then it forced you to take a look at them. And you have two decisions. Once you do that, you can either act on it or do nothing or do nothing and continue to ignore it. Well, the problem is still that you know, just staring at you in the face. And so I want to encourage you guys, it doesn't have to be big, but you own this. These are things that you can make a difference in. And so get up and do something about it. I mean, COVID has shown us what I would say is the new normal, we now have to be more conscious of what we touch and what we share in our health and what we eat, cooking more in it. This is one of those times in life one of the rare times that there's a magnifying glass put up to To you, and I think everyone's gonna leave this taking notes of how to move forward. Yeah, and I know we kind of talked about this a little bit. I'm also seeing messages out there. For people who, you know, there is a lot of pressure right now, there's a lot of pressure to come out on the other side of this better than you were going in. But the reality is, that's not going to be the case for everyone. Some businesses are going to fail, some businesses are going to close. And you might personally be not in a good place when this is over. And so there are a lot of messages giving grace to people, you know, saying it's okay, we are in, you know, this is a trauma happening right now. And so I do for me, personally, it's important to acknowledge that yes, this is a hard time for a lot of us. And not everyone has the opportunity. I don't know if that would say all that but some it's not as easy for some people to leverage this opportunity as others. Yeah, I hope that I didn't say that in a way that made it sound easy. But I think that this is making the changes, always one of the hardest things that you have to do. And you have to overcome whatever situation you are in now, I actually have friends that a friend who owns a salon, and they are devastated. Their landlord who own their lease is still looking for all their money. And they legally had to close the doors because of COVID. And so I would tell you that it's not easy. It's not easy to move forward. It's not easy to not be depressed. It's not easy to get out of bed. It's not easy to look at your family knowing that this didn't go how you planned for it to go. Yeah, it's definitely not easy, but we, we want to encourage you that it is it's possible

It’s Not a Loss if you Learn the Lesson

You know, there is a possibility to think about the situation differently. Yeah, maybe but but I would say greater than that. For me. It's knowing that you are normal, that this thing happens. I think that when I really have gone through the hardest points in my life, the hardest thing for me was thinking that I failed. And you're the only one in the history of the world. Yes. But right now, everyone is failing. We are all being shown a mirror of our imperfections of the poor choices that we made. And it's okay. Right. Yeah. I mean, the reason I see this as an opportunity is because we have the choice to look at it as a lesson or to look at it as a failure. Yeah. And so I that that for me, like when I looked up, and none of my business stuff was in order, like, I was like, Okay, I'm about to learn about trees. Hey Mark. I'm about to learn how sole proprietorships work in North Carolina. And so, you know, I saw it as an opportunity. But yeah, definitely. Everyone like failure. Failure is real. But you are not alone. You are not alone. And it doesn't mean it's over for you. And yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That it is not over. It's not the end. Even if your business goes belly up. Who's to say this is the last business you're gonna have? That would be me to write and listen, we have businesses fail. We wasn't in COVID. So we don't even have and we didn't give up and we did not give up. We you know, you guys shouldn't either. So yeah, so anything else we want to say about about that? So I did want to share quote, this actually came from Michael Jordan. He said, I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Let that sink in y'all. And that's Michael Jordan, right? The Michael Jordan.

Conclusion

And so I would say that COVID was a mirror COVID was a hard time COVID showed you where you were weak, but it gave you the chance to evaluate, evaluate where you are, evaluate how you move, evaluate your next steps. And now it's your new normal. It's the way that you will continue for now. And it's the way that all of us get impacted. And so let's choose a solution. Let's choose to be positive. Let's choose to get out of the bed. Let's choose to make a decision to live. Yeah, because likely when the world does open back up, it won't look the same. There is no going back to what we had. So it really isn't in our best interest to figure out how to pivot, whereas necessary and make the most of what's to come, good, make the most of what's to go. Amen. All right. So is that it? That's it. That's it. All right, signing off. I'm Tenisha Nicole and I’m Tashaunda Dixon and we are Black Girl Fly.