Keeping Up Mind during this Pandemic

The past few weeks have been clear on how serious this coronavirus pandemic has been escalating world-wide. Educational and industry sectors have been closed across countries, major events such as the Tokyo Olympics are postponed to 2021 and testing delays have made it impossible to confirm how many people are being infected. The stock market has got its biggest decline in decades, it feels like the world is unraveling. There is so much going on out there, with loads of uncertainty, it’s easy to get trapped through Whatsapp or Twitter all day.

“On the other side of the storm is the strength that comes from navigating through it.”

When thing seem tough, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and so given below we have some simple ways to stay on top of your anxiety and stay positive during these times:

1.     Do a quick check-in: How anxious do you feel right now?

2.     If you feel you aren’t able to handle it, it’s okay to take a break.

3.     Limit your sources of news or try to avoid your phone or laptop for a short time.

4.     Request friends and family to share only important news with you, or turn off notifications.

5.     Choose when to re-engage with your devices.

6.     Establish boundaries and use the time to do something that can engage your mind productively:

-         At home Yoga: in order to stay at fit whilst you sit at home with no physical activities.

-         Video call a distant friend to catch up – during work hours, keeping in touch with friends becomes a tedious task, hence utilize this to reconnect with them.

-         Listen to the latest hits or the old ‘90s classics over the net. Music helps in relaxing the muscles in our body, keep it a steady deal to listen to them whilst you work from home or during doing in-home workout.

-         Be more creative: paint, play keyboard, write blogs, do pottery, arrange your cupboard, save some recipes for cooking, do the unnecessary chores that would be difficult to do during work hours.

-         Spend time with your family and pets – this re-establishes a bond that gets evaporated during work and chaos.

-         Continue the normal routine. It will help you stay healthy during the lockdown. Continue to wake up and get dressed on your usual time. Don’t stay in your pajamas all day, it could lead to feelings of being unproductive or without purpose. 

Strategies such as social distancing, hand washing and other safety measures can really help preventing COVID-19. Along with this, find a way to keep your mental and physical health active, while staying at home. Staying busy, keeping in contact with others by phone and social media, and maintaining a sense of structure are just a few key ways that you can mentally manage your quarantine.

“Remember if you really want this to work, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.”

You are Enough – Ways to Achieve Self-Acceptance

“It’s not the mountain we conquer all our lives, it’s how we build ourselves.

People around, be it our family members, peers in school or our partners in romantic relationship, all of them impact our self-concept and how we perceive ourselves as individuals. Life is too small to go hunting for it, we need to stay still and create our true identity!

“Affirmative, validating and nurturing – positive self-concept. “

Inaction breeds fear and doubt. Action sets in courage and confidence. Now if you want to conquer fear, sitting at home is not an option. Get going, get busy and make the best out of your potential.

“Critical, dismissive, harmful – negative self-concept.”

Remember, it’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think! Your thoughts say it all. When we say that ‘it is the thought that counts’ and when it’s filled with fatalistic opinions, then everything seems like a mirage. Where life is a coaster, you might have spent several years feeling as though you aren’t worthy of being happy. However, it is very important to realize that ‘you are what you believe’, once this is done, a sense of self-acceptance rolls in along with freedom and happiness.

PARENTS; CHILD’S SELF-CONCEPT

A child’s self-concept begins to develop from the moment they enter the world. This is the time where parents play a key role to their development. The kids who experience low self-esteem have gone through crummy parenting styles. If significant people in your life repeatedly tell you that you are not good enough, demanded more from you when you have tried your best or treated you in ways that have left you feeling peripheral.

Developing a healthy self-starts at home; children need love with certain conditions. They need nurturing, attention and boundaries with reliable care. In absence of these qualities, further as they grow up and face puzzling circumstances, they will automatically tend to believe that they are not worthy of love.

For reasons the parent couldn’t give love that you deserved – the issue fabricated within them. It’s high time to stop taking responsibility for other’s behavior and work towards accepting your real self- you are enough the way you are!

Let us together work towards self-acceptance:

1.     Challenge the Inner Voice: Notice whose voice is demotivating you. Is it your own? Or have you come to believe it from someone else? The message it delivers might have been adapted from what you were told as a child or during your relationships. The thought process might change once you truly open up to yourself and understand the voice demotivating you is giving you false information.

2.     Interacting Compassionately: When we are more compassionate while communicating, this fosters a tender mindset. When our perception of our self is seen through compassionate eyes, self-acceptance flatters easy. 

3.     Make Sure to Practice Self-Care: Allow yourself to meet your daily needs. This will help to value yourself more and give a boost to self-acceptance.

4.     Be Selfless: Feed a hungry street dog, help the blind woman cross the road, hold the door for an old couple, make dinner for your roommate when you know she is having a hard day, smile at a stranger. These are small gestures which can mean a lot to the living being standing in front of you. When you give, it builds a positive self-concept and even others benefit a great deal.

5.     Make a Dear Diary: There are 24 hours in a day, take out time to write down at least one thing that has made you happy in the past week, past one month or even the very same day. This shall encourage you to focus on the magical voice within you and give your self-esteem the power to accept yourself.

6.     Make Mistakes: No living being on this planet is perfect. Haven’t you seen your friends make bad decisions all the time? Haven’t you helped them through all of it? Try all the thoughts in your head; when a diversion appears, take the road less travelled by, if that doesn’t work come back and try the other road but, never sit all alone in yellow woods thinking you made a mistake. Have the courage to correct that mistake by standing up and accepting the blunder and further moving on. Keep reminding yourself of how beautiful and worthy you are.

Self-acceptance doesn’t come easy, the ride to fulfill the requirement goes high to low and vice-versa, similar to the fastest roller-coaster but, nothing worth having comes easy. Put the energy in peddle and commit to your personal growth; value yourself because you are enough just the way you are.

Just When Thoughts Become Thinking

One negative thought, suddenly turns into two, three, four, five and before you know it, your energy is absorbed and caught up in two hundred thoughts coming towards you at the speed of a comet. This is the hag with thoughts; before you know it, you are emerged in a sea of them.

“Oh, I am not sure you look very nice in that dress”

Or

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have said that, it didn’t sound right”

The inner voice of a human being works in all sorts of mysterious ways, it has both gentleness and clarity, which again is accompanied by a familiar physical feeling, perhaps a sinking feeling down the belly or an ache in the shoulder, a twitch or a tingling in the fingers.

Furthermore within mili-seconds, we hear another thought arriving slightly louder, the physical sensations launch into a tighter grip.

“You really don’t look very nice in that, mind you, you NEVER look nice”

Or

“You are always saying the wrong thing, why don’t you just shut up!”

Or

“Don’t even bother trying anymore, you are useless!”

Negativity will hold you back, weigh you down, and drain your energy into little bits of ashes. This is how it works with pace:

-         The train approaches, first thought enters.

-         You climb on board without realizing the destination, because by now you are familiar to this journey.

-         Further, the train begins to escalate, the second thought pops up.

-         With the speed of a comet, your third, twentieth, hundredth thought, each trying to outdo the previous one.

-         On you go, one thought after another, suffering your way through the negative thinking.

Visualize how your thinking can speed up and take you places you don’t want to go.  “When you hear that first little thought, just chase it away”. Train your mind to be stronger than your emotions, or else be prepared to lose yourself every time. Sometimes, consciousness doesn’t do the needful until it’s too late. It makes you believe that you deserve these negative thoughts but, ultimately as Carl Jung quotes "There is no coming to consciousness without pain”.

In the end, our minds are connected with memory. Minute something goes awry in life, our default position gets triggered. Before getting settled for a job, we gather evidences to make sure it is secure with high professional benefits but, yet the odd thing with negative, self-critical thinking is we just seem to accept the voice. When things feel off, we don’t research or check the reason behind punishing ourselves. However, even if we do come to terms with it, we do very little to change our thought process regarding it.

Observe your thoughts, create an awareness of how you behave when you feel have gone wrong or when something becomes overwhelming. Notice the first thought and accept it. Allow yourself to understand why it is where, why it has pulled you into a negative state of mind. Take steps to change your behavior towards it, control your thoughts before it picks up the speed.

This won’t resolve the issue but, it will give your clarity in life. Don’t you want a more positive way of dealing with problems? Being patient does the work, our brains need help changing their natural flow of behavior and by doing this we can change those patterns.

-         Notice the first thought.

-         Acknowledge it is there and understand why.

-         Take  control to dismiss this thought

-         Change the destination of your thoughts.