Today, my friends, you are living your life.
Even in the midst of hard times and trauma and crisis, life has not stopped.
Life is not about some destination that we’re striving to reach. It is about the entire journey, the experience and the whole process of living. Through the ups and the downs, the challenges, the pain, and the good times. It is all life.
And right now, you are living your actual life.
We are not on pause. In the midst of the Coronavirus lockdowns, it may feel like life is on hold since everything is closed and the world feels like it’s shutting down, but you are still in the middle of your actual, real, only get one chance life.
The coronavirus did not put your life on hold.

How do you want to be able to say you used this time?
What do you want your one life to look like?
When this is long over and your grandkids ask you about your experience during the coronavirus pandemic how to you want to be able to respond?
How do you want to say you lived? What do you want to say you did?
Everyone is experiencing this differently.
Some are busier than ever.
Others are without a job and have lots of time on their hands.
And everywhere in between.
So I want to be careful not to be prescriptive here. It is your life and your decision how you want to live and your situation is very unique to you.
But I do want to invite you to do something with this time. To view our current situation as an opportunity. The way I see it we have three options here. We can use this time to bury ourselves in negative and numbing behaviors that essentially cause us to move backward in our personal growth process. We can use this time to stagnate in life and feel stuck. Or we can use this time to grow and develop in some way.
Thriving in Life Always Means Growing

By definition, to thrive means to be growing. If we want to thrive in life we have to keep that forward momentum, even when it feels like everything is being put on hold.
Now, if you’re life is more stressful and busy in this season I’m not suggesting you try to overhaul your life, but all of us have the chance to take advantage of this opportunity to learn and grow based on our unique experience here.
And I’m not suggesting that we need to fill every free moment with activities designed to help us progress. If we have the chance to slow down and rest, that could very well be the area where we feel most called to grow and develop in this time. Or perhaps there is another area of our life that could use some attention.
This is going to be unique for everyone.
But everyone can do something.
Discovering how to move forward in a crisis
When you’re considering what you could do and what area of life you might want to focus on, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Evaluate Your Current Life
First of all, take some time to evaluate where you currently are in the various areas of your life. I go into significant detail about this process in this post here, but the main areas of life that you want to evaluate include your spirituality, mental health, relationships, intellectual health and growth, vocation, environment, finances, and physical health.
Identify Your Values
Next, take some time to consider your personal values, what is most important to you? And does your current life align with these values?
If you notice an area of your life that you’re unsatisfied in or if you recognize that you’re not living in alignment with your values, take some time to make a plan to focus on that area.
Create Short Term Goals for Growth
In the best-case scenario, we’re going to be staying at home during this global pandemic for at least a couple more weeks and more likely we’re looking at some version of this social distancing life to last for a couple months or more. Given that, what short term goals can you create for the next couple of weeks or months that can help you use this time as an opportunity to grow and improve in an important area of your life?
Again, these days we are living are your actual life.
Life is not on hold.
To thrive in life we have to keep moving forward and growing and developing into the people God created us to be.
What can you do right now to help you keep growing?
Additional Resource to Help You Keep Moving Forward
I have created a quarterly goal planning workbook that will walk you through the entire process of evaluating your life, creating a vision for your future, and breaking that vision down into realistic quarterly goals. This workbook could be a great resource to guide you in creating some short term goals that you could pursue over these next couple of months of self-isolation. You can find out more about the workbook and get your copy here.
