“I can’t wait for things to go back to normal” has been a key phrase for the last year. Due to the pandemic, there’s been so many changes to our lives, many of which we had no control over. It’s understandable that there’s a collective craving for some sense of normalcy. The constant adjusting has highlighted the importance of adaptability. In order to progress in today’s world, we are all having to make adjustments. I don’t believe we will ever go back to what we once perceived as normal, instead, I feel we can take these experiences and create a new normal.

Have you ever heard of Kintsugi? It’s the Japanese artwork created by taking broken pieces of pottery and fusing them back together with gold. Instead of putting the broken pottery back together with a clear adhesive to replicate its original form, Kintsugi creates a new piece.

The pieces from the original pottery are used to show appreciation for the original form and its history, but the gold adds a unique beauty and strength to the art. I believe the power to adapt is a superpower that most undervalue.

To adapt means to make something suitable for a new use or purpose, or to modify it. Kintsugi is adaptation in art form. Maybe you don’t feel the need to go around fixing your broken ceramics with gold, but what about your life? 

Here are five steps you can take to adapt and constantly create  beautiful new normals:

1. Appreciate your history: Consider all you’ve accomplished in your lifetime and celebrate yourself.
2. Evaluate your life: Look at your life and honestly evaluate it on the basis of your happiness, fulfillment, health, your life’s purpose. Are your current actions, habits, and boundaries aligned with the life you truly desire?
3. Take responsibility: If you want to increase your anxiety, blame everyone else for the circumstances of your life, then try to make them make changes to benefit you. I’ve never met anyone who wants to increase their anxiety. A major key to creating your new normal is taking responsibility for the things in your life that you can control. Place your focus on the parts of your life that you can change. Remember: where your focus goes, energy flows.
4. Add your gold: Now that you know where you are, you’ve decided where you’re going, and you’ve determined what factors you can control, start shifting, changing and adapting. Your new life may take some time to piece together, but most things of beauty require time.
5. Be patient: As I said in the last step, adapting takes time. Give yourself patience as you’re crafting your greatest masterpiece yet: yourself.

Happy adapting!