2020 was the year where we said enough is enough
Looking back on a year that has presented more than its share of challenges, Camille Wilson, director of Grow Together Now, suggests it may have been just what we needed.
Never in a year have I seen so many breakdowns – career breakdowns, relationship breakdowns, life breakdowns – saying to ourselves and to our workplaces, enough is enough.
This year was one that no one could have expected, anticipated, or knew what to do as a result. Nobody was prepared for what this year brought, but equally, many people have taken this year as one to rethink what they do and where they spend their time.
For many of us, we have been sitting on the edge of our chairs for the entire year, watching the scenes of a bad movie unfold, feeling uncomfortable with the uncertainty that lay ahead. For many of us, all we could do is sit and watch, from our isolated houses, from behind our masks.
This year has brought emotions forward that many people haven’t had to face before – it also brought opportunities for change. Companies that were resistant to flexibility before, had no choice but to open their arms to it; colleagues who didn’t know each other, had no option but to open their doors to the lives behind their computer screens; leaders were forced to step up into the shoes that they may been avoiding…and most pointedly, individuals who were unhappy in their jobs, in their workplaces, have started to realise that life is too short, and that something has to change.
Never in a year have I seen so many voluntary job movements, in a market that people keep talking about being volatile and unsecure. Individuals who had been in companies for years, who I had naively assumed had been made redundant due to COVID-19, were in fact saying “enough is enough – I am not doing this anymore”.
Many people are marking this year as one of despair, one to never forget, but one that we all want to forget. What many people haven’t realised yet is that a lot of people have also learned in this experience is how to choose happiness. How to choose picking up your kids from school over getting the project done by that unreasonable deadline; how to choose to value yourself in a job that doesn’t care about your wellbeing; how to know that a job just isn’t worth it anymore when they haven’t put their employees first.
Choosing happiness over “the smart thing to do”, isn’t an easy feat, but this year, we have seen so many people decide that just isn’t worth it anymore – be that their career, their relationships, how they perceive our mental health – because we were finally forced to open our eyes and realise that maybe things weren’t working.
This year hasn’t been one we’ve known before, but it is a year that amongst the emotions that we all so conveniently have tried to avoid, we were faced with a lot of truths, a lot of hard truths about our careers, about our workplaces, and about ourselves.
As much as it might be too soon to say, we needed this year. We needed to be reminded of how vulnerable we are as a human race, as individuals, as companies, as societies. We needed to be reminded that there is only so long that we can pretend that the life that we are currently leading is sustainable.
This year, there are many of us who have experienced what mental health truly means; and what it should stand for. It isn’t the dark corner of the room anymore. It is the entire room. It is all of us.
Now is the time for change, and we are ready for it.
Camille Wilson is the principal consultant and speaker at Grow Together Now.
