What happens next?

With the dust starting to settle after a monumental global shift, Beth Kempton looks at how difficult times can be just the catalyst we need to change our lives for the better

This time five years ago I was pregnant, waiting eagerly for the birth of my second daughter, Maia. I was also exhausted, working way too hard with no let up, haemorrhaging money to fix anything that popped up as a problem, and taking absolutely no care of myself. One day, it was all too much and I collapsed on my bedroom floor, and started seeing visions of myself in my twenties on some of the adventures that seemed so far away in that moment – climbing a mountain on horseback in Bhutan, sharing a carriage on the Trans-Siberian railway with chandelier-toting Chinese merchants, watching a humpback whale dance in Antarctica – and I realised that I had forgotten how to feel free.

It is often our hitting the floor moments that lead us to a new door, and new adventures. It happened to Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love (only she was in a bathroom). It happened to Glennon Doyle (on a yoga mat). It has happened to many others, and it may have happened to you. If so you’ll know that once you have hit the floor, the only way is up… and it might make a good story one day. So many non-fiction books are born of struggle and pain, yet they uplift us because the lessons are hard earned.

In my case, my hitting the floor moment led to a big question about what it means to feel free, and to my first book deal with Hay House for Freedom Seeker. That book led to another, and another, and another. I am now working on book five, and I count my blessings every single day that I get to write and call it work.

So many good things have come out of writing books, which are nothing to do with writing books. New friendships, new experiences, travel, fascinating conversations, new things to learn, unexpected invitations and exciting opportunities, connections with some of my own literary heroes… ⠀⠀Take a moment to imagine what it would mean for you if, five years from now, you were penning your fifth book. It is certainly possible. If a book is not your thing, think about what is, and imagine what it would mean for you if that had come about. The truth is, whether it happens is in large part up to you. It may not appear in exactly the way you expect, or to the timescale you think would work, but making something outrageously exciting happen over a period of several years is absolutely possible, if you start to take action towards it.

I wrote my fourth book in lockdown in sixteen days. I have never felt so compelled to get something finished so urgently, not as an expert on pandemics, but as someone who has been helping others navigate change for a decade. And I could see that some mighty turbulence was heading our way, and no-one would be unaffected.

There was a moment when I was reading the final proof of that book, We Are in This Together: Finding hope and opportunity in the depths of adversity, at 5am one morning in April, that I had the clearest vision of our lives as slices of time. I submitted the manuscript on Tuesday April 14. By the time the typeset proof came back on April 29, most of the statistics in the book had doubled.

It was hard to process what the numbers meant in terms of real people’s lives, and it made me realise how, in just two weeks, some of the simple details of the days I had captured like diary entries had already morphed into other kinds of details and how, if you were to pick up that book today, it will have morphed into something else again, when you reflect on the context of your own experience. I feel enormously grateful that I had the opportunity to capture this extraordinary time in book form, and reflect on it through the lens of navigating change and doing what you love. I also have this tremendous sense of us living through a piece of history as it is being written, and how important it is that we capture these details so that when this is all over we don’t forget, and somehow whitewash over the pieces that really mattered.

Of course all of life is like this, constantly evolving into something else, but it feels as if the great slowdown also accelerated certain things, like the time it takes to get used to new ways of working and communicating. Have you noticed how there has been this strange dual cycle going on, where something things seem to have been floating, suspended in time, and others seemed to move faster than we ever thought possible? Much of that has been born out of necessity, and some out of the lack of other distractions. It has been such a curious thing to watch, and inspiring in many ways.

Whatever our individual experiences of the pandemic have been (and continue to be, in one way or another), there is no doubt that the landscape has shifted, and all bets are off now. We have realised that things can change at a moment’s notice, and while that can be disconcerting, it also offers reason for hope and even excitement. Because if things we previously thought were impossible – like most of the world shutting down in a matter of days – then what else might be possible.

So go back to that dream of what you’d love to experience in your life, and ask yourself this: What is the one small action you can take today to shift the trajectory in that direction?

Of course all of life is like this, constantly evolving into something else, but it feels as if the great slowdown also accelerated certain things, like the time it takes to get used to new ways of working and communicating. Have you noticed how there has been this strange dual cycle going on, where something things seem to have been floating, suspended in time, and others seemed to move faster than we ever thought possible? Much of that has been born out of necessity, and some out of the lack of other distractions. It has been such a curious thing to watch, and inspiring in many ways.

Whatever our individual experiences of the pandemic have been (and continue to be, in one way or another), there is no doubt that the landscape has shifted, and all bets are off now. We have realised that things can change at a moment’s notice, and while that can be disconcerting, it also offers reason for hope and even excitement. Because if things we previously thought were impossible – like most of the world shutting down in a matter of days – then what else might be possible.

So go back to that dream of what you’d love to experience in your life, and ask yourself this: What is the one small action you can take today to shift the trajectory in that direction?

Beth Kempton is the author of We Are in This Together: Finding hope and opportunity in the depths of adversity (Piatkus, £2.99), a practical and inspiring compass for navigating these turbulent times, moving from resistance to resilience, to take care of yourself and your family in the chaos