Life is said to be full of ups and downs. Despite the valleys and peaks of life, humans have always found a way around it and going on in life is often inevitable. The world survived the wars and the Spanish pandemic of 1918. The current COVID-19 is, therefore, not an exemption. We would overcome this valley and move to the peaks of life again.
If COVID-19 is a collective race, there is individual responsibility in it. As an individual, it is according to your faith. It is what you see that you will get at the end of the pandemic. Coronavirus will be over; some people will be grounded, and someone will rise and rise above the circumstance. Most often, life’s circumstances or adversities are neutral. It is our disposition, reactions or responses that determine if the circumstances are turning to positive or negative situations for us. This accounts for why some people have become invincible coming out of adversities strong and better. What are their secrets?
The paramount secret for surviving adversities is sustaining a positive mental balance. Before, we look at how to maintain or sustain a healthy mental emotion and stability during times like this, let’s look at what is our mental health.
According to the Mental Health Foundation, United Kingdom, your mental health is how you think and feel. It is your outlook on life, and how you cope with life’s ups and downs. It is an essential part of your health. In simple terms, it is what you think about your current situation and your future which determines what you see ahead of you and how you feel now. The most common secret of all achievers is their ability to maintain a positive outlook during adversities focusing on what they can control and doing things that would make the situation better.
As a life coach, I have the experience of coaching people passing through phases in their finance, relationships, career, or health and people seeking to develop their leadership effectiveness. Some are passing through grief, crisis or a different phase of life unique to them. Keeping them in a mental balance is an essential perspective without which it might be challenging to achieve a successful outcome. Here are few tips on how to maintain your mental health and stability during a transition period like COVID-19.
The starting point to a healthy mental life is your perspective. Perspective is the way you see things that determine your responses to your situation. Whenever we are passing through something that is not the norm, we call it different names. To some, it is a phase or crisis period. I do admonish you to see life as full of ups and downs or peaks and valleys. When you are at the lows of the peaks, rather than giving your situation a name that vibrates negative emotions, why not change the name of the game? I call my lows of the valleys, the transition periods. It is transitionary periods because nothing tough stay tough forever. What you to see at these periods, either in your finance or marriage are transition rungs to another level. With a transition’s mindset, you will have positive emotions to learn the lessons and do things that will take you back to the peaks as quickly as possible.
Having established the mindset, you need to return to your original state. The default state your creator wants you to be is a state of love, joy, and peace. Anything outside these three attributes will destabilise your mental health and balance. Whenever the unexpected happens, get the perspective that it is another transition period, then find your way back to your best state of mind where peace, joy, and love dominates. When you are in this state, you will be calm, function well mentally and see possibilities.
Seeing possibilities is excellent but useless unless you act. You need to avoid a state of idleness. Idleness mostly is the reflection of the state of your emotions. However, I have seen people who are in a state of joy, love and people and allow unbelief to hold them static. If you believe the situation will get worse and you have no chance of getting out of it victoriously, you will give up and fold your hands. Idleness does not make things better but gets them worse than it was. Idleness is, therefore, a criminal offence against your future and destiny. In this era of lockdowns, when we are operating below our average capacity, you have all the time to start what you have ever wanted to do.
If it is a business, you can begin to learn about it online conceptually and getting all your facts and figures together. Beware of nothing using your days effectively by counting the days. It would be best if you made the day counts as the virus might not go soon. We must live with the reality of our time. The truth is that we are outside the automatic, our comfort zone and on a journey to creating a new world order.
Immediate you start acting after positive perspective, dominant mental state of love, peace, and joy, you will move to the learning zone from the dungeon of fear. The acting or learning zone is vital to your mental balance as it will elate your moods and enable you to see a glorious day ahead. In your learning zone is the new skills and confidence to navigate your career, marriage, health, and finance after COVID-19. In doing this, be mindful of the potential new order of the world. Some jobs will be off the radars of employers while others will be in high demands. Digital illiteracy will not be acceptable and working from home will become the order of the day. Also, there will be a need for you to develop a new level of relationship and emotional intelligence to managing behaviours post coronavirus.
With action comes learning and with both comes the arrival of growth. Growth is an inevitable component of your progress in life. When you grow, you develop a new set of awareness and mental faculty to operate at your next peak and levels. Remember that what you do at your valleys will determine how quickly you get back to the peaks. What you do at the peaks will determine how long you stay at the peaks before the next valley. Unfortunately, the valley is COVID-19 is universal and unplanned for and might stay longer than anticipated.
To keep moving on at the action stage, you will need to establish and maintain a routine. Routine is a brother of habit and a link to a ritual that produces a continuous outcome. While you can be in a habit unconsciously, routines are habit you do with expected results. You could develop a routine like investing in yourself by reading books. Reading books at this time will enlarge your horizon and take you to places you cannot ordinarily travel to and help you to learn from others. Do not read for reading sake, read materials in the areas of your interest with determination to implement lessons learnt and measure action taken. One good routine that will also help you is exercising. Exercising keeps you in shape and improves a perfect level of coordination of thoughts, feelings, and action.
Conclusively, there is a source of unlimited support in time of crisis. There is a place of help when passing through your transition periods. This is found in your religion and beliefs. Do not abandon your religion. Practice it and exercise your faith. In using your faith, you will be tapping into available help from people around and above you. If you do these tenaciously and mastermind with others, there is no doubt whether you will be among those who will at the other end of the pandemic taking new opportunities the event will create. I see you maintaining and sustaining a positive outlook on life and situation because of taking actions to keep your mental sanity positive during this period.
