Skip to main content

Entrepreneurs say transformative opportunities emerge when discovering your new normal

The Blisses sit crosslegged on yoga mats looking out on a white porch at the Hawaiian greenery and islets in the bay.
Jason and Lindsey Bliss said they “spend an hour in meditation, visualization, reading affirmations and listening to what the Lord wants to share with us.” The Blisses are Willes Center entrepreneurs in residence on campus.
Photo by provided by Lindsey Bliss

In the 1980s, elementary schools across Oregon allowed animals and insects to entertain and educate us each month in a coordinated rotation.

We would watch with anticipation when caterpillars arrived in the spring, stopped eating, hung upside down on a branch and created their silky-webbed chrysalis. We loved the idea that you could begin as one creature and eventually transform, even if it was a gruesome, gooey mess. The caterpillar digested itself from the inside out during the process. What happened inside the chrysalis was a complete mystery, but we didn’t care as the results were magical.

The year 2020 introduced a significant change in our lives, regardless of our differing perspectives on the events that have transpired. Each of us has likely had moments of quarantining and will need to decide, when we emerge, what we learned through the process, and what will become the new “normal.” What will happen within our cocoon? What new creature will be revealed? How malleable will our minds become, and will we become laser-focused on creating a positive future?

Change leads to cocooning

Over the past few months, several individuals and foreign governments referenced a concept they titled “cocooning” as it relates to protecting the vulnerable during this pandemic and asking them to stay home. This is an extremely effective visual representation for individuals who have a higher probability of being infected.

However, this concept of cocooning has an even more ubiquitous presence in our lives as we reflect on how we will respond to unpredictable events when we, too, have completed our uncomfortable process of transformation.

Will our lives have dramatically changed when this is over? Will the quietness of quarantining and the stillness of self-isolation allow us to slow down long enough to become refined? Or will we emerge from our cocoon unchanged, cynical, judgmental and unwilling to become a new creature?

Becoming a new creature

We have all heard ecclesiastical representatives, influencers and well-respected thought leaders tell us to “be the best version of ourselves” or “become new creatures.” This isn’t a new concept, and yet, it continues to resurface as we strive to find some secret ingredient to improving our lives.

Disruption can confuse and disappoint many, yet as a family, we decided early on during COVID-19 to respond differently and shed areas of our lives that needed adjustment.

Sheltering at home has been the most effective couple’s therapy. After 21 years of marriage, we always enjoyed our time together and felt that we were predestined to find each other. We align on 99 percent of our opinions and enjoy many of the same hobbies, foods and dreams.

However, all relationships have areas that are sensitive topics. Quarantining for months without intermittent breaks opened the door for us to discuss any old wounds that needed to be properly addressed. We couldn’t run away from our issues, ignore them completely or let distractions suppress what needed to be removed from our lives.

We were able to find a productive time to reflect, be vulnerable and change. We allowed time to be our biggest factor in healing and self-reflecting in a therapeutic and loving way. We resurrected good habits.

When we were a younger couple, our bishop would often ask each family in the congregation if they were praying, studying the scriptures, attending church, going to the temple and having weekly dates. While all of these were tremendously important already to us, we found ourselves drifting toward areas time afforded more of, especially our ability to read scriptures and pray.

As a family, we started encouraging each other to have more sincere and personalized prayers. It started with a five-minute personal prayer and eventually reached 10-plus minutes uninterrupted. It was amazing to hear the results as we each took turns bearing truths about how it felt to communicate with our Heavenly Father in a more meaningful way, avoiding the repetitions that often make their way in our prayers when rushed.

We increased our interest in being healthy, exercising more regularly, adjusted dietary preferences (including introducing new recipes and a reduction in the standard sugar fixes) and focusing on expanding our knowledge through a wide range of outstanding books. We continued to dream of our next adventures, angel invest in new ideas and prepare for the future.

All of these changes allowed any stagnant areas of our lives to become pliable and prepared our minds to accelerate our growth.

The Bliss family sit around their wooden table in a bright blue-walled room painting and drawing posters with words.
Jason and Lindsey Bliss shared, "We wrote our prayers, our hopes and dreams, our ideal and best-case scenarios of our life on poster boards, stickers on the mirror, markers on the windows and put them in places they could be read and pondered."
Photo by provided by Lindsey Bliss

The malleable mind

With the inaccessibility of temple attendance today, isn’t it wonderful our forced isolation at home has given us ample time to be in a holy, blessed place, only equal to the temple in sacredness, the Lord calls home as well?

In our homes, we are the gatekeepers deciding, with each action, if the Lord is allowed to enter. During times of trials, we feel the need to feel Him here with us tangibly. We want to know He is walking among our children as they play, joining our family prayer circle, soothing our thoughts and standing at the head of our endless faith. In mortality, our greatest prayer is to be the closest we humanly can get to our Heavenly Father. But how do we go to the next level of our devotion?

President David O. McKay preached about our part in this quest to peel back the curtains one veil at a time until we’re witnessing life through His eyes. He said, “Meditation is the language of the soul…private devotion or spiritual exercise... Meditation is a form of prayer... one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord.”

Our isolation has given us the time and the desire to walk through this door. Seeking and researching the art of meditation has allowed us to experience a communion with the Lord that we haven’t reached before.

This led our family to double our efforts in other forms of focused thought. We wrote our prayers, hopes and dreams, ideal and best-case scenarios of our life on poster boards, stickers on the mirror, markers on the windows and put them in places they could be read and pondered.

Elder Holland said, “He [God] expects you to embrace and shape the future — to love it, rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities. God is eagerly waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can’t if you don’t pray, and He can’t if you don’t dream. In short, He can’t if you don’t believe.”

[God] expects you to embrace and shape the future — to love it, rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities.
Elder Holland

Since COVID-19, we try to spend an hour each day in meditation, visualization, reading affirmations and listening to what the Lord wants to share with us. The blessings of deepening our worship with the Lord have been great. However, the most cherished is the tangible ways God has confirmed our worth and His abounding love, which in turn has given us courage to continue on in His name.

Laser-focused

Last year, Jill Schafer competed in the Great Ideas Competition at BYU–Hawaii. Her business concept was to create an application that combined affirmation statements with meditation. This was right up our alley, and eventually, we funded the completion of her idea known as Self Pause.

If you haven’t subscribed to the theory of self-affirmation, you might want to try this little experiment that sometimes makes it into youth conferences and leadership seminars.

Have a friend spread their arms wide open and tell them to keep their arms up while trying to push their arms down. Most likely, they’ll struggle a little but will resist effectively.

Now, have that same friend say emphatically 10 times, “I am weak!”

Once they seem to believe what they are saying, attempt to push your friend’s arms down again. Regardless of how strong your friend is, their arms will weaken at such a rapid rate, they might become scared that the effects are permanent.

Remarkably, if your friend, instead, energetically says, “I am strong!” 10 times, the words trigger something inside their mind and body as their arms become immovable.

Is this just another trick, or is there some lesson to be learned here? In Proverbs 23:7, it reads, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Scientifically, God created our brains to respond to our thoughts and words. Each day we send thousands of messages to our brain of how it’s supposed to behave. If you choose to use powerful words to send uplifting, God-filled truths to your mind, you’ll see miracles happen in all aspects of your life.

If you choose to use powerful words to send uplifting, God-filled truths to your mind, you’ll see miracles happen in all aspects of your life.
Jason and Lindsey Bliss

Your health could improve, your relationships mended and strengthened, improved grades in school, greater work results and a more positive, happier life. You get the idea. When we become addicted to a higher, more powerful self-talk, we will experience miraculous results in unexpected ways. Experiment with this and see for yourself!

During this time of great reflection and transformation, we have been reminded every voice matters again. We have been humbled as a nation when not addressing the needs of every citizen. We have seen the increased number of those affected by the disease, loss of work, depression, death and an overall disconnect as they watch the never-ending stream of seemingly ‘bad’ news. Some have become disenchanted with leaders and dispute the information shared. Iconic and small businesses have failed. Sports took an indefinite recess.

But one thing is for sure – We have been given a choice on how we want to emerge when our cocoon hatches. We can decide today to change and become new creatures, allow our minds to become malleable and focus our intentions while allowing the craziness of an unprecedented year to be a time of complete evolution.