2020 the year of Patience and Priority

Those that navigate through 2020 and keep their head above the water deserve huge respect. It’s been a year of really testing everyone’s patience and in order to have some sense of stability, we all had to shift and rebalance our priorities. For most, it was rediscovering family time, for some it was learning a new skill, and for some, sadly, it was learning to live through the loss of loved ones. It’s been an incredibly tough year!

Please don’t mind me trying to look at all of it from a positive lens.

We are all learning to live in a new environment, but we get to define what this new environment means. We get to fix something that was broken. We get to reassess our priorities and choose a new direction.

For leaders and business owners, COVID is really testing our leadership skills and resilience. We are given an opportunity to reassess priorities and perhaps look at what we are building from a new light. Nothing is perfect and nothing is 100% predictable. Sometimes doing our best is all we can control, and letting yourself know that, is a great way forward. Our team is the most important asset we have, and during this time we get an opportunity to be the leaders people want to follow. COVID has given us that opportunity to be humans again, to start a meeting with “How is everyone doing”; “Is your family ok?”; that rare opportunity to look at the person as a human and not “Dental Assistant” or “Hygienist”, but a person with problems, anxiety, and stress. Not everything needs to be solved with dollars, metrics, KPIs, and promotions that are “well earned”. The most human thing is to care and have sympathy. And if one is in the position to help, then let’s genuinely help. We get a unique chance to build an “Island of Stability”, where, perhaps, your practice or business (even if it’s virtual, as ZenSupplies), can be the place where the team feels supported and has certainty.

We are also given a unique opportunity to fix something that was broken, on a personal level. COVID and lockdowns have forced us to reassess people around us and ask ourselves the questions that Viktor Frankl, in his book “Man’s Search for a Meaning” calls the most existential question for a human being. And this question is “Who needs me?”. From my personal experience, reconnecting with family and fixing broken relationships has been the most difficult and yet the most fulfilling experience of my life. And it all started with “Who needs me?”.

I genuinely hope we learn from 2020 instead of “going through”. I hope we take something, fix something, become something, evolve into something better, and allow people, who we love, to need us even more!

Thanksgiving Holiday, in my opinion, is one of the most important family holidays. Hopefully, for many of us, this year will look much different, more enriched with family and joy.

We are grateful to every single office and team member!

From all of us at Zen, Happy Thanksgiving!

Tiger

P.S. on the picture is my dad, who I rarely talk about.