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Let's take this opportunity to co-create a better future. Here's how.

"Covid-19, like any disruption, essentially confronts each of us with a choice: we can choose (1) to freeze, turn away from others, only care for ourselves, or (2) to turn toward others to support and comfort those who now need our help. That choice between acting from ego or acting from ecosystem awareness is at the core of this moment, and also at the core of our work, a choice that we face every day, every hour, every moment. The more the world sinks into chaos, desperation, and confusion, the greater our responsibility to radiate presence, compassion, and grounded confidence."

Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer in the MIT Management Sloan School and co-founder of the Presencing Institute. He chairs the MIT IDEAS program for cross-sector innovation and introduced the concept of "presencing"—learning from the emerging future—in his bestselling books Theory U and Presence (the latter co-authored with P. Senge et al).

Click here to join Scharmer's free 14 week online initiative GAIA to help us collectively use the current situation for civilisational renewal.

Above, you can read the wise words of a man whose work I value deeply: Otto Scharmer.

Last year, I participated in the massive open online course facilitated by Otto and his colleagues from MIT and beyond, called U.Lab: Leading from the emerging future.

U.Lab provides insights, techniques and actions to co-create a healthy and balanced future for all of us (and not just some of us). Scharmer calls this 'moving from ego-system to eco-system awareness'.

(The course will probably run again this year and I highly recommend you participate. It empowered me with actionable, scientific, real world tools rooted in love to be part of the necessary worldwide movement toward positive change.)

And now, sooner than I had imagined, a global wave of disruption is shaking our world. In these times of acute uncertainty, where many of us experience fear and grief, I know and trust that we can come out of this better than we were before.

All hardship is an opportunity for growth. In my own life as much as in yours probably, the deepest pain has produced the most formidable transformation. The same can be true for this worldwide crisis.

In each moment, in any situation, we have the opportunity to either react as victim of our circumstances, or to take responsability for our inner reality. And that insight makes all the difference. Someone said: "This is the moment I was born for." She's right. If not now, then when?

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

― Viktor E. Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust-survivor

It may hurt. It may require sacrifice. But we are larger than that.

Step up now. Don't give in to drama or panic. Wake up, be present and act positively. Don't renew your news feed all day and don't drown in social media updates. Be creative and act.

Send out little love notes, offer help, play with your kids, call someone who might need it. Or turn your attention inward and find within: the eye of the storm.

Let this be something we look back on years from now saying: "We were there, it was tough but so much good came from it."

What's next:

Again, I'd like to point you to Otto Scharmer's GAIA: Global Activation of Intention and Action (I will be participating as well).
Also coming very soon: my own free 40-day training Conscious Connected Living: Retraining the body and mind to live consciously in the Now. Let me know if you want to be a test reader and participant by hitting reply.
A guided breath and body journey (free download) in less than 15 minutes in DUTCH. Thank you for keeping this to yourself - anyone interested can get their copy by signing up for my newsletter and/or participating in a live workshop as soon as those resume.

Much love,
Judith