Top of Mind Thursday – March 16, 2023: Three Years Later

I’m writing this from Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico — one of the original wellness retreats and still one of the best.

I was supposed to be here three years ago this week — the week the world stopped for COVID. It took awhile to get back here, but it feels good to be in a nourishing, healthy environment like this.

The world has gone through quite a trauma since 2020. We’ve lost over 7 million people — more than a million in the US alone, and millions more who’ve been sickened by the virus.

Everyone on the planet has been impacted by COVID — if not by illness or death, by disruption. We’ve added social distancing, bivalent vaccines, and KN95 masks to our vocabulary.

The official pandemic may be over, but our lives will not ever return to 2019. Instead, we have to find a new path forward.

Deborah Szekely, the founder of Rancho la Puerta, is about to turn 101 in May. She is still active, vibrant, and incredibly sharp. When asked what her secret is, she said, “I search out the positive and whatever the siuation, I always do the right thing.”

For the Ranch, doing the right thing meant not only taking the steps needed to safeguard the health of guests and staff, but also paying the salary of each staff member while the ranch was closed for six months…”because they’re family,” Deborah told us, “and we need them to stay with us.”

As we move into a post-pandemic world, this attitude is one we can learn from in our personal lives and in our businesses.

Today, 3 years after the global lockdown began, how do we stay positive…and regardless of what the world throws our way, how do we do the right thing?

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