Financial years move forward with or without you… It’s time for choice
I began writing this in early January, inspired by the coming together, good will and understanding that showed itself through a year of a global pandemic. I probably was in a state of high excited about the new year or a state of low for all that could have been sadly not happening during the year.
It’s a new year and with it a new perspective...
Those were my thoughts; finding different ways to combat challenges and better ways to interact because the experiences of the year lead us to know better.
The life events that 2020 halted and forced upon people; resulted in a human change from compulsive need to be busy; to make a sudden slow down in terms of lifestyle. Whether that would have been working from home or shifting where one needed to work. It could have been studying from home, beginning a family, realisation of building a family, getting in touch and mending family relations, child care and child education from home, starting new opportunities from home or going through tough times from home.
The intersection of all this while having to meet your business needs, customer needs, employee and colleagues needs, personal finance goals or struggles from home could not have been easy.
What would have been normal quickly became uncertain and prolonged through the year before.
Regardless of the circumstances; human beings showed that in all this, we live, survive and thrive. Whether it be aspirations to consume, advance, utilise, serve or explore past our physical and atmospheric barriers.
Coming out of 2020 and into 2021 breeds a different perspective; one that breathes life into character traits like resiliency, perseverance, curiousity and consistency for the year 2021.
Finding one’s voice and using that to filter out what is relevant and serving to you in your season of life; either makes long sought after goals worthwhile or the realisation of new goals meaningful or misguided.
Life activities that were shifted to a virtual setting; hosted and governed with professionalism or not was an adjustment for many who had facility for it. For those who could not afford it or were just not prepared, dipping into emergency funds or rethinking business models, supply chains and reconciling and relaying delays was a common problem.
Either way, this prompts the pace and tone which people will interact with their finances this year. Extending a line of credit to retain a client base or confronting the necessity for expansion, marketing campaigns, up-skilling or outsourcing are questions that private and public sector stakeholders find themselves asking. If not that, then rethinking the problems that were brought to light and the opportunities that sincerely begged seizing during the year.
Whether we confront it or not, the activities we should have done or actively been working on require a re-think into what exactly our year and the lives we lead in it end up being.
The paradigm that begs the question of whether we live for our work or work for our lives provides milestones as the financial year comes to a close. Whether we have been going with the flow, waiting for certainty to come together with our loved ones or serving deadlines to hopes, dreams and decisions we have been putting off. Probably not as dramatic as that, maybe promises we made to ourselves and the people that touch our lives either having the binary answer of yes, no or the grey area shade of wait on it or it depends.
I find that the year, the months, the days and inevitably the time that ticks away lets go of us or stands still when we experience our life journeys of growth, pain, joy or celebration.
Irrespective of whether we have our finances in a row or not.
