There's a famous Haitian proverb that translates as: "Beyond mountains, there are mountains."
Read positively, it can evoke images of a landscape of infinite opportunities and new adventures. Read wearily, it can suggest a world of constant challenges and endless restarts.
I’ve thought a lot about those daunting mountains these past 18 months, the courage and resilience that’s needed to reach basecamp, the ambition, drive, determination (and sometimes luck) needed to reach the summit.
Over the last year, our businesses, our families and our communities have had to navigate a heartbreaking descent before ever reaching the summit because of external changes like new restrictions and lockdowns beyond our control. Sometimes, we’ve then been asked to climb a different mountain entirely and had to rethink the team and resources needed, and learn new survival tactics.
Reignite 1.0 last August brought listeners in contact with inspirational voices like Arianna Huffington, Jamie Heaslip, Margaret Heffernan, Tara Mohr, Amy Webb, Norah Casey, David Allen, Sarah Ellis and Gina Miller. I hoped then that we might be at the beginning of the end, that we were going to find new ways of living alongside Covid.
Instead, we were really just at the end of the beginning.
Twelve months later, for all the stories of people who changed careers, started new businesses and scaled new heights, there are stories of people who lost jobs, closed their businesses and saw their industry shutter to a devastating halt.
Now, as we prepare to return to workplaces, lecture halls, airport queues and far flung destinations, our old pre-March 2020 environments may appear familiar but feel radically different because we as people have changed.
And that’s where Reignite 2.0 hopefully comes in with a fresh set of ideas, voices and stories, but still under-pinned by the same desire to help individuals, groups and businesses chart a way out of the pandemic.
In Reignite 2.1 on July 31, we’re going to take stock of the mammoth climbs and journeys travelled in twelve months and begin to signpost what the journey ahead looks like.
At this basecamp moment, we’ll talk a lot about routines and habits - the pandemic changes we want to keep and the routines we want to let go of. Dr Judd Brewer, one of the world’s
foremost experts in learning how to overcome bad habits and deal with anxiety, will be on hand to talk about how we prepare for new changes and yet continue to deal with high levels of uncertainty.
He’ll spend a lot of time talking about triggers, behaviours and rewards, and his three-step approach to unwinding anxiety. If you want to come prepared to his interview in Reignite 2.1, check out the habit mapping exercise on www.mapmyhabit.com (pdf for download is here)
We’ll also be launching our Reignite Local Heroes campaign in 2.1 so if you know someone who went above-and-beyond to make a difference, please get in touch on reignite@rte.ie
