Business as Usual Will Now be Business as Unusual.

How many times do you hear pundits and personalities talking about “when things get back to normal?” Seems like it’s the next thing people say after they list the crazy changes they’ve experienced during the Coronavirus crisis.

In case no one’s told you yet, listen up: When the Coronavirus crisis is all over, things will not get “back to normal.”

Let me be crystal clear – The New Normal will become The Normal.

To be more clear, business as usual will now be business as unusual.

Remember what Churchill said when America finally entered World War II, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

None of this is to say that we won’t move forward in the future. The history of mankind in general – and the United State specifically – is one of constant advancement towards a better tomorrow. True, we don’t always start in the right place and we don’t always take the straightest path to our destination, but we do get there eventually.

Nothing is Over Until We Decide It’s Over.

Think things are over? Always remember what that great thinker, John Blutarsky, said: “Over? Did you say over? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor…?”

A quick, albeit more accurate backpaddle through history proves that we have been through substantially more dismal disasters in the past, many of them in the last century alone, and we have prevailed. We will find a vaccine, we will put the economy back on track, we shall overcome.

Think you’re sick of “sheltering in place?” How about comparing your weariness to another day with Netflix and Pop-Tarts to Anne Frank and seven other people being stuck together in silence for two years in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam?

Worried about the death toll of Coronavirus? As tragic as it is, there’s no comparison between its severity and the body count of pre-antibiotic and pre-antiviral pandemics such as the 1918 Influenza epidemic. THAT plague killed between 50 and 100 million people around the world.

Think you’re bored from lying around the house? Just compare your day to those of our medical professionals and first responders who are busier than ever. My incredible wife sees patients all day long and still makes trips to ACLFs and hospitals after her office hours end. She checks on her bed-bound hospice patients while I walk the dogs, chat with clients, and work on my next book. All of a sudden, watching The Crown for a second or third time doesn’t seem quite so bloody onerous, does it?

And please don’t get me started on the marketing parasites who call themselves “business first responders.” Or the marketers who invite scared consumers to attend free webinars designed to simply shove more people into their bait and switch sales funnels. The Coronavirus is a real tragedy, not a sales opportunity. Doctors, nurses, EMTs, and grocery store workers are the real heroes in our lives, as are the employers and professionals who are figuring out ways to keep their people earning their paychecks and maintaining their lives, NOT the people who rub their hands together because they see the current situation as “an opportunity.”

If you’ve got free time, use it to figure out to help your neighbors and yourself.

Figure out how to take them some toilet paper and then figure out what you’re going to do next. The world IS going to come back but it is NOT going to come back the same as it was yesterday. Now is the time for you to start thinking of what you’re going to do after we get the all clear.

Books, webinars, podcasts, work-from-home scenarios, laptops and smartphone apps are all ways people are going to move forward. And who knows what else smart people are going to create for us to use?

Maybe you’ve got a great idea you’ve been waiting to make real. Now’s the time.

This might be the first chance in years that you’ve had the time you need to sit and think about what’s next. Use that gift wisely. Because when the world comes roaring back, you want to be roaring right along with it.

If you need to know how and why, click HERE to read what Miami Heat superstar Udonis Haslem wrote. It’s one of the best reasoned pieces on life before and after the Coronavirus Crisis that I’ve read yet.