Simon Hodges photographed by Matt Porteous
This month, LUX columnist and life coach Simon Hodges reflects on the difficulties of the past year, and the lessons we’ve learnt
As we all start to emerge, perhaps feeling somewhat dazed and disorientated, from this long period of isolation, I find myself contemplating a few questions:

Will we ever experience life again as it was before"
What lessons have I learned from this challenging period"
What lessons do we collectively need to learn from this last year"

Sitting in my log cabin office on a very windy and still fairly cold day (summer still feels a way off!), one thing is abundantly clear to me: never underestimate how quickly things can change!
Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine But despite the late summer and the chaos of this last year, the first thing that comes to my mind is the word ?hope?; there is nothing to say that our lives and this world cannot change markedly for the better in the coming weeks and months ahead.
Of course, I could just have easily chosen other words like ?despair? or ?frustration? but I find myself unable to do so. And one of the main reasons why I say this is that I think we all know with absolute certainty that it does not serve us to stay in such a dark place any longer.
Lessons Learnt ? for me personally
My first lesson learnt is to choose to focus more of my energy on the light while recognising that the darkness is always there and that there are times whe...