Eric Buehrens Consulting
Executive Coaching & Organizational Consulting

Perspectives

More about how I see things, and resources I’ve found valuable

 
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Perspectives

More on how I see things

 

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Tough Year for Happiness

Are you happy?


Should you expect to be happy? Are you entitled to be happy? How the heck can anyone be happy in this plague year of 2020?

Here’s a great short read that brings some insight to these questions in the context of COVID. Laurie Santos is a psychology professor at Yale, the host of a popular podcast called The Happiness Lab and teaches a course at Yale called “The Science of Well-Being”. Almost a quarter of Yale undergraduates take it, and through Coursera, 3 million people worldwide are now enrolled.

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Doomscrolling into the light

I learned a new word the other day: “doomscrolling”, defined as “the act of endlessly scrolling down one’s news apps, Twitter, and social media and reading bad news,” by Ariane Ling, PhD, a psychologist and clinical assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at NYU Langone Health in New York.

My name is Eric, and I’m a doomscroller. Twitter is my drug of choice. Well, I’m probably not a hardcore, down-and-out, gutter doomscroller - but guilty enough nonetheless.

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Acceptance and resilience in these times

If anything is clear about “pandemic times”, it’s that we are living with profound uncertainty. None of us imagined the pandemic six months ago, and much of what we hoped about its course and impact has been upended. It’s now clear that the disease in the US is different and worse than in most other countries. The ability to tolerate uncertainty, anxiety and adversity is resilience. How can individuals muster resilience in this mess?

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Seeing Today in Context

I have been astonished that the Civil War, now over for 155 years, has emerged as a major theme within the unfolding civic upheaval over white supremacy

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Coping with Job Loss and other Disasters

My intention this week is to offer some thoughts and resources to those facing or threatened with job loss as the unemployment rate in the United States nears 25%…

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Holding Space in a Zoom World

I’ve been surprised by the amount of good counsel that’s flowed into my inbox these days: either I’ve gotten more discerning, or the crisis is stimulating a lot of hard and generative thinking about how to productively adapt…

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Safety at Work, Outer and Inner

Safety is on everyone’s mind these days but it is a concept with many sides to it, the most obvious of which is: I hope that you and your loved ones are safe. As we all know, many are not. Some of you are on the front lines of caring for those afflicted. You’re particularly in my thoughts, and so are those of you that are working, directly or indirectly, on new diagnostics and therapeutics for this new disease…

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Travel Guides for This Very Strange Journey

I hope you’re navigating another week of lockdown / isolation / Zoom meetings / home schooling / frantic and nerve-wracking clinical responsibilities. Thinking of all of you, have had the opportunity to connect with some, and although I am sure that you are all quite inundated not only with professional and home responsibilities, I thought I would offer these in the hope that they might bring a slightly different and hopefully helpful perspective to bear on our current situation…

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Taking Measure of the Pandemic

I’m drawing your attention to a couple of articles that I’ve found insightful in the current crisis. I cannot say that I know the authors' future predictions are correct or that the recommendations are right for you. You all have complex and demanding professional obligations, and family and personal lives that need your attention now more than ever. There is no formula or guru who can determine what is right for you…

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Taking Measure of the Pandemic

I’m drawing your attention to a couple of articles that I’ve found insightful in the current crisis. I cannot say that I know the authors' future predictions are correct or that the recommendations are right for you. You all have complex and demanding professional obligations, and family and personal lives that need your attention now more than ever. There is no formula or guru who can determine what is right for you.

I was drawn to these articles because (the Chronicle article in particular) there is a somewhat contrarian assertion that we are living through a fundamental change and that even when the pandemic is over and work and academic life have returned more-or-less to normal, something will have passed away. We are living through a worldwide psychosocial trauma and a symbolic death, amidst a pandemic that is producing widespread actual, physical death and suffering. Seen in this context, there is every reason to put higher priority on stability, self-care and compassion towards oneself (as well as others in the wider community).

I’ve transitioned my work with you to Zoom / phone in accord with social distancing requirements, but this wider perspective suggests to me that the frame, the scope and content, of our work may need to evolve as well. I’m not sure what I even mean by that, and it will be different for all of you. But I’m hoping that we can explore it together.

All best wishes for health and safety to all of you - I’m thinking of all of you and hoping that our work together can be a source of support and strength through this very challenging transition between what was and what we cannot yet see clearly.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-You-Should-Ignore-All-That/248366/#comments-anchor

https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief

Eric Buehrensgrief, pandemic