Keep moving in the face of adversity

I love watching college football. This past season has been the strangest that I can ever recall. COVID has changed everything in life and college football is no different. Comparing this year to last year feels like two opposite ends of a spectrum.

One of the themes from this year is to keep moving in the face of adversity. All teams are facing adversity in one form or another. They might have positive cases on their staff. They might have players test positive. They might have opponents canceling games due to COVID.

But college football, as a whole, has adjusted. Changing schedules, new rules around testing and contract tracing, and how teams are evaluated mean a different college football season.

Almost every interview mentions this adversity. Coaches talk about the resilience of their players. Players talk about their lack of control in many decisions around COVID.

But I am seeing this theme go from a negative to a positive. In the beginning of the season this adversity was talked about as an unfair challenge.

Now it is talked about with pride. People are proud of how their team has handled the craziness. They boast about the toughness of the team and the ability to adapt.

Too often in life, we see change as weakness. We don’t understand that it takes strength to change and adapt. It takes courage to step out of the normal routine to chart a new course.

It is also viewed as being opposed to systems and routine. However, in these interviews the players and coaches aren’t changing for change sake. There is purpose for the change. So, they tackle these changes by looking for a new normal, a new routine.

In the face of adversity, it is important to be flexible and adapt. This means being resilient. It means being tough. But it doesn’t mean a complete abandonment of systems and habits. Instead, the systems and habits allow us to change when required while still maintaining a sense of consistency.

That is the key to our personal lives as well. Even through all this change, we have to find a way to be consistent. Being consistent in our systems and habits means that we don’t just throw out everything because something changes.

Instead, we work with that change. We know it means things will be different. But it doesn’t mean everything has to be different. We can hang on to many routines and habits that we have built. In fact, adversity often means that we strengthen our systems and habits.

But this is a choice. If you feel victimized and use this adversity to change everything, you will find unnecessary chaos. When everything feels as chaotic as it is, adding more is not beneficial. Instead, we all need to work at finding a new normal. We need structure. We need the systems and habits. So, keep moving in the face of adversity by being consistent and working to make sure you are designing the structures to control how you move forward.