Well I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that the topic of my latest blog is centred around the current worldwide pandemic and how that is playing out in our lives.
When I first started hearing stories about the corona virus to be honest, I specifically didn’t take much notice. As I know I’ve told you all before I can tend to be an anxious person, so I never watch the news, or listen to it on the radio. I am constantly ‘hiding’ news stories on my Facebook feed that people share as I know that if I watch or read about the terrible things happening in the world it can cause my anxiety to escalate.
This ignorance however only lasted as long as my next weekly grocery shop when I discovered that I could no longer buy toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitiser (that I use for work), paper hand towel, rice etc. It soon became pretty evident that there was something much bigger than just a ‘virus’ going on and that I had to actually read up on what was going on and how I could do my best to keep my family healthy and safe.
I understand the panic and fears that people have over this worldwide crisis, however the thing that is really upsetting me the most is the behaviour of my fellow humans. I have witnessed people abusing staff members in the supermarket, fighting over items in another’s trolley, people purchasing way more than they could ever need leaving nothing for others and reselling basic items online at exorbitant mark ups for pure greed.
I know that many of us are scared, I get it, I am too but we truly need to be thoughtful about whether we are adding to the pandemonium or helping to calm it down. Our behaviour and attitude helps to guide those around us, and as a naturally anxious person I am hyper aware of my own thoughts, feeling and behaviour at the moment and how they may play out for my family, friends and clients.
So what am I doing to keep myself and my family positive, grounded and focused on the good rather than the bad? The answer is several things, we are obviously following all the usual instructions of regular and thorough hand washing, limiting social interactions and being thoughtful about our purchasing however I thought that it might be helpful to share with you all a few extra things we’re doing at the moment in case you are looking for some alternative ways to deal with our current situation.
Affirmations – this is a huge one for me. Positive affirmations are powerful statements that help to change our thoughts and brain energy. They help your brain to process thoughts in a different way and have been proven to lower stress and assist us with seeing the world in a more positive light. To get the full benefit of your positive affirmations have the written out somewhere that you will see them (ie. on your bathroom mirror, phone background etc) and say them several times a day, out loud to yourself. Some of the positive affirmations that I am using at the moment are:
‘I am safe, secure, healthy and happy’
‘I have a beautiful, warm home filled with love’
‘I am blessed to have food to nourish myself’
‘I am grateful for my healthy body and mind’
‘The universe is full of abundance and can provide for all’
Gratitude – I am a person who uses a gratitude diary daily anyway, as does my daughter, so we are pretty good at acknowledging all that we are grateful for. What I have found though is that throughout the last few weeks when I find myself or my family slipping in the panic of the world around us, simply by stating out loud what I am grateful for is helping to shift those anxious feelings.
An example of this would be when I was struggling to find toilet paper in any supermarket. I would literally be at multiple shops every day before and after seeing clients and drove suburbs away to try and locate some. The more I walked into a shop and saw another empty aisle the more my panic rose, so in one particular shop (about our fourth one in a row) my daughter started to panic and cry. It hit her that there is something very wrong with the world at the moment and that it didn’t feel safe. So I sat her down right there in the empty toilet paper aisle and asked her to think about what we had to be grateful for? We randomly starting listing things such as;
‘I’m grateful that if things really got bad, we have friends and family that we could ask to help us’
‘I am grateful that I have a car, with petrol in it that I can drive to these shops and check for toilet paper’
‘I am grateful that we are healthy and well and able to be at home and not in a hospital needing treatment for this virus’
‘I am so very grateful that I’m not driving to all these shops on my own, and that I have you with me to keep me company and keep me smiling’
You get the idea, it’s about grounding us and bringing us back into the positives of our situation and being thankful for what we do have. On a side note after this little episode at Woolies my mother in law came to visit us that weekend and bought a 12 pack of toilet paper with her for us… hehe… see the universe always provides!
Grounding – I have been more mindful of g
etting us all outside in bare feet on the grass. It’s such a fantastic way to ground your energy and absorb all those beautiful electrons from mother nature back into our bodies. It helps to bring a sense of calm and connection back to the earth and really help to bring the energy that is overworked in our heads back down into our feet again. So if you’re finding that you’re feeling a bit anxious, angry, frustrated, sad or any other emotion at the moment I would highly recommend kicking off your shoes and getting outside on the grass for a bit – send the kids out there too – you’ll be amazed at how much better you can cope with things when you’re energy is grounded.
As always, I’m also using my crystals, oils, flower essences and lots of other remedies that may test up to balance our energies and try to keep the positivity flowing.
I hope that there is a little gem in here that you can take to help yourself, your family and friends through this stressful time that we are experiencing. Please remember that ‘this too shall pass’ and I’m sure in years to come I’ll look back at this blog post and laugh about the fact that it’s centred around buying toilet paper!!
Lots of love, Stacey xx