12 WAYS TO STAY POSITIVE DURING LOCKDOWN
Liz Pickering – Resilience Coach
12 WAYS TO STAY POSITIVE DURING LOCKDOWN
It is no secret that we are living in very uncertain times right now and the world is in a global state of fear. Fear for our health, our loved ones and our financial security. The pandemic has brought with it an alternate reality that we have only ever witnessed in the movies, and yet here we are, living out its very real existence. Some of us are able to take a pragmatic approach to the situation, whilst others of us find ourselves swept up on a sea of fear and anxiety. Where do you stand on it all?
For those of you who are struggling I want to ask you – did you find yourself panic buying fear – actually or figuratively speaking? Has it pervaded every part of your life?
With fear swirling all around us and lockdown currently in play, feelings of being afraid, anxious and out of control are common.
COVID-19 FEAR
It’s a well-known fact that change and uncertainty is stressful, but we now have a new normal to contend with – lockdown, restrictions, children at home, working from home or no work and resulting financial worries. It’s the first time that many generations have gone through this. This is our modern day world war, fighting an invisible enemy that caught us off guard meaning we weren’t prepared for it.
Here’s the thing, fear and stress are contagious. Just like COVID, it passes from one to another, but fear spreads at lightning speed. It’s rife and inescapable at this moment in time. It’s all around us, at every turn.
How are you handling it? Are you keeping your mental health in check? Or are you trying to control your world, tracking the news, searching constantly for information, frantically trying to plug yourself in to every media outlet that you can, glued to social media? Is your complete focus on COVID-19?
Right now it’s very difficult to get through a day without hearing or discussing the ‘C’ word. For many of us, this time is causing varying degrees of stress and worry, depending on our situation. If you are experiencing stress as a result of the pandemic, you’re not alone in feeling this way. Many of us are in that place. It can seem hard to anchor ourselves in mindfulness when we’re worried about money, health and what this means for our future.
However, wouldn’t it be great, if you could move to a better place? A place where you could manage the stress, where you could figure out “what am I going to do”?
TAKING CONTROL OF FEAR BASED THOUGHTS
The first thing is to name the fear, give it a voice, let it express itself, name those feelings that you have, the panic, the anxiety, uncertainty.
Allow yourself to experience the fear whilst acknowledging it. They say “feel the fear and do it anyway”, so now is the time to experience it, feel it, to know what it’s like, to listen to what you’re thinking, what you’re doing and what you are saying to yourself. By acknowledging the fear, you are more likely to view it with clarity and accept it as a set of emotions and feelings that are happening ‘to’ you. By becoming conscious of it, you are more equipped to create a way of controlling it rather than becoming consumed by it.
In the past, I’ve experienced these feelings of anxiety and uncertainty and what did I do? I found that love is the antidote to fear. To express love in a myriad of ways, is to open myself up to both giving and receiving love. Not just from my partner, my family, but to extend that love to friends, neighbours and strangers. Hard as it maybe, making the choice to focus on something nourishing and positive as well as practicing gratitude, is far more helpful to your mental health than the alternative. Learn to control the controllable and let go of what you cannot.
Offering my love and emotional support to others is not only a great distraction but a way to feel good. Whilst it’s easy to hunker down in your house or flat, why not try extending a hand to your neighbour, asking from a safe distance, “how are you?” At a time when we’re all in lockdown, it’s still important to keep a broader human connection going, in order to reduce the feeling of complete isolation.
12 WAYS TO STAY POSITIVE DURING LOCKDOWN
1. Now is the time to say “I reject the fear, I reject the panic, I reject the anxiety”. Don’t buy into the speculation, the ‘what if’s’, the chaos that is being created. You can’t know everything that is happening. When you open yourself up to this, you open yourself to fear. It fills you up and starts to eat away at your beliefs, your confidence, your very soul. Now is the time to stay in the present, to bring your focus to what is in front of you right now.
Stop worrying about what is outside your control, don’t worry about tomorrow. If you find your mind racing, practice some mindful breaths or meditate to ground yourself in the moment you’re in.
2. Whilst there maybe days it feels like the end of the world as we know it, remember, humanity has survived far worse, in much more challenging conditions. We will come through the other side and we will adapt if we learn to let go of mentally resisting the change. It won’t be forever, the world will recover and it may even create some positive global change in the future if we’re prepared to look for the silver linings.
3. Find affirmations that work for you. I’ve written on my mirror, “I have nothing to be afraid of”, but what’s yours? Maybe it’s something like “I am doing the best I can”. If you want some suggestions, then check out https://motivationping.com/fear-affirmations.
4. With immediate effect, make the decision to filter what you read on social media. If you find social media is causing you more harm than good, make the decision to come off it for a while. If you need it for business, be strict with yourself. Post what you need to and then come off it or only look at the responses. Don’t allow yourself to scroll mindlessly focussing on things that will trigger your fear. Don’t be consumed by it.
Put your boundaries in place, put a block on your notifications, or if you can’t do this, then make an agreement with yourself that you’ll only look at the news or social media once a day. We need to have information, about restrictions, what we can do, but don’t let it rule your life. Read it once a day and then leave it. Don’t keep your phone by your bed and look at it upon waking. Instead, wake up, stretch, find your own natural morning routine, make breakfast, look outside at the day, then look at your phone.
5. Start trusting in your instincts, your intuition and your gut feelings. Keep putting into practice all that you have learnt in life. You know yourself better than anyone else, so start trusting you. Start seeing life as it really is, look for the beauty that surrounds you all the time. Be in the moment. For me there’s no city noise, I can hear the quiet, the sea, the seagulls calling.
When I’m out for my daily walk I walk on the pebbles, feeling them beneath my feet, seeing the grass, the flowers, the trees, noticing the sunlight on my path. In this beauty there is healing, nature reassures us that there is a security, there is goodness in this real world, there is abundance in life and there is plenty of life to be had. Mother nature reminds us of the seasons, there is an order to things, and this too is just a season, which in time will pass.
6. If you are trying to find some positives in all this, celebrate the fact that nature is being allowed to take a break from humanity right now, with global emissions having significantly dropped. We are learning new ways of doing business and realising that actually we don’t need to travel as much as we have been. We can have meetings online rather than driving to them or taking a plane. We can reduce the world’s carbon footprint if we all take a different view. This is an opportunity to get off the global hamster wheel and take a look at how we can protect our planet. This is a learning opportunity for us all.
7. Elaine Scarry in her book “On Beauty and Being Just” says of the artist Matisse:
“He repeatedly said he wanted to make paintings so serenely beautiful that when one came upon them, suddenly, all problems would subside.”
Find the beauty that surrounds you and revel in it, the sunlight, trees, flowers, music, candles, smells of bread, coffee, find them and see them so that like Matisse, suddenly all problem subside. Nature is a gift to all of us, it’s there all the time, so take it as the gift that it’s meant to be for you.
8. I’m hearing constantly about living life online now, having virtual coffees, lunches, playing games. But why not take the time to live in the real world and do real things, listen to music, read a real book, learn to cook, learn a craft, talk to your family, talk to your neighbours, talk to strangers (from a safe distance of course!). Take time to engage with the real world.
9. I spoke to a friend of mine who said that even in lock down it had made little difference to her world. She works from home, rarely has meetings, does everything online, so other than shopping and going out, little has really changed. We spend so much of our life indoors already, in that artificial world that we’ve created for ourselves, our lighting, heating and cooling systems, plastic surfaces, even when we go shopping the shops are full of artificial smells, our lives run on the clicks and beeps of our phones, computers.
Why not take this time to break out of those artificial surroundings and appreciate the world. If you can, sit outside your home in the sunshine when we have it. Have a picnic in the garden sitting on the grass, talk to your love ones, be it the ones you are with, or on the phone or video. Being in nature for 20 minutes every day is found to boost our energy levels, so why not boost yours?
10. Whilst the chaos of the world reigns and life is out of balance, partners working from home, kids off school, your own work, take a minute for yourself to deep breathe, to meditate. Find a space that’s just for you where you can find your joy and happiness. Take time to release your worries and your stresses, send them out, don’t keep them bottled up inside you. When the fears start overwhelming you, reject them, keep doing this, daily, hourly if needed. Be active in stamping the fear out, say it out loud but then replace it with your affirmations, fill yourself with life, the abundant life, with peace.
11. Now is also a good time to break those unhealthy ties. Have you noticed those people that after you’ve had a conversation with them, you’re exhausted? I’m talking about the energy vampires! Whatever you would like to call them, they drain you of your energy by filling their conversations with you with negativity and cynicism.
It’s one thing to support a person going through a difficult time, but quite something else to allow other people’s negative view of the world, themselves and others to bring down your mood, particularly at the moment. So now is the time to break those ties or if you can’t completely then at least limit your exposure to them. Hans F Hansen said, “People inspire you or they drain you – pick them wisely”. Now is the time to choose those who inspire you.
12. These are unprecedented and uncertain times, but it’s also a golden opportunity for you to reshape your life, start seeing it as an exciting time to make changes. Start changing the way that you are thinking, change your thoughts, start grabbing the negatives and replace them with positives. Change that voice that you listen to in your head, start trusting in your intuition to make different decisions, finding your authentic self. Make different choices to the ones that you made yesterday, learn to change your reactions, your feelings, to have faith in yourself.
Now is the time to reshape our motivation, our desires and our awareness, to create more mindfulness, more strength, more joy and more happiness. Stay safe, stay strong.
How are you feeling at this moment in time? What’s been your experience of lockdown so far?
