Keep Moving Forward… Everything Is Impossible Until It Happens

Everything is impossible until it happens.”

—Nelson Mandela

We’ve experienced a lot of “impossible” this year as we ask, “What more could happen?” And we can interpret Nelson Mandela’s quote in many different ways. For me, I prefer to draw some inspiration out of it.

How to keep moving forward.

Like for so many of us, these last months have tested every drop of mettle we could muster just to keep going. And now we’re tired. No—we’re completely exhausted beyond anything we might have imagined. They’ve even given it a name, “COVID Fatigue.”

Trying to adjust and adapt just about everything from our former normal workdays, running businesses, and sustaining our train wrecked lives has at times felt overwhelming beyond our limits to cope.

Can we see an end in sight? Not that I can tell… at least not yet.

I found some unlikely inspiration today as I was cruising through my email feed. I’m not sure why they stood out because these three words were buried within a paragraph.

“Keeping moving forward.” Three simple words form a powerful strategy for difficult times. And for some reason, they stood out to me this morning.

Those three words along with the message below were part of an email ad… a strange place to find inspiration.

But amazingly, I have also found hope – to throw away what’s broken, to question and reimagine a better way.”

—Patrick Robinson, founder of Pashko

Patrick has a way of pulling you in with just a few words.

He has a knack for telling his story and the vision for his company in a very subtle, yet captivating way. 

Pashko is a travel clothing startup that I discovered a little over a year ago while preparing for our trip to Argentina. TRAVEL CLOTHING—Talk about a business not to be in during a pandemic as the whole world shuts down. 

I ended up on their email list after ordering some pants for the trip. And I haven’t unsubscribed like I usually would after everything arrived in good order. But I also noticed early on that Patrick would include a quip of simple wisdom or insight that make his email ads worth checking out.

Spirits suddenly faded as everyone on the planet abruptly stopped traveling.

Now imagine how Patrick might have felt as the head of a travel clothing company as everyone stopped traveling and started staying home. Early on, I thought, “This company is toast.” And that was disappointing because Pashko’s pants are incredibly comfortable and made two very long flights actually tolerable… I might even say enjoyable.

Maybe the surge in working from home offset the decline in demand from travel. After all, we want to be super-comfortable while working at home too. The good news is that Patrick and his team at Pashko have pulled through.

They kept moving…

They did some crazy things, like moving their manufacturing to the States and pivoting [their] entire business to a socially responsible and regenerative future.

The chance to rebuild stronger and to pull others up along with us. A big task, but one that we can do together.”

—Patrick

This is the message today… When things get messed up, we pull out the stops and figure things out. The fact that this disruption is dragging on longer than most events we’ve experienced doesn’t really matter. The solution is still the same.

Like Patrick said above, [finding] hope – to throw away what’s broken, to question and reimagine a better way… is a pretty good approach.

Keeping moving forward.

Be untucked.

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