Author: Margot Krekeler

We can’t escape our current life experience.

This is, of course, always true.

Our life takes place in the present, always. We can’t quit the current version of our life, we can’t jump back into the past or forward into the future.

We all know that but just now – in the middle of a worldwide pandemic – we can easily feel tempted to put all our expectations and hopes into the future.

We think, ‘I’ll do that, stop this, decide about that, think about this, etc. when things got better again or back to normal’.

But life is happening now and here. It’s not on the other side of self isolation. We can’t put it on hold for a couple of months.

Waiting for other/better times

• • can prevent us from trying to make the present better,
  • will make us feel stuck, and helpless in the here and now,
  • may hold us back from actively taking control of what we can influence and create right now,
  • can mean that we overlook new opportunities the current version of our life is offering to us.

So it seems to be a good idea to remind ourselves that we don’t have to wait for things to become better in order to love and fully live our current life.

What can we do to fully live our life in the present, in the here and now?

Some suggestions:

• We can do a little thought experiment: What if the now was the normal?

What if our current life was our normal life? What would we be doing then?

What would we gratefully appreciate – all the good things that we have in our life right now, all the people, experiences, circumstances that are so precious to us?

What would we no longer accept as a given, what would we try to change to the better?

What would we do to contribute and to make the current world a better place?

If we intentionally decide to accept that the now is the normal – how do we want to think, feel and act in the current period of our life?

And, based on that decision: Does anything come up to mind that we can start to handle differently/better, right here and now?

• We can ask ourselves questions about our values and our purpose. And answer them.

As we are currently more concerned about life, health and even death than we normally are, deeper questions about our life and ourselves might come up in our mind.

Instead of pushing away these potentially unsettling questions, we can deliberately decide to find our very personal answers to them.

Defining our values and our purpose in life can give our mind and our soul structure, stability and direction.

We can ask ourselves questions like these:

‘What is really important to me in the different areas of my life?

Am I currently neglecting important values and principles?

What do I want to achieve in my life, today and tomorrow?

Where do I want to focus my time and my energy?

Etc.’

And then we can use our answers to now truly ‘value our values’:

How can we pay more attention to what’s important to us in our daily life?

Could we start a new personal or professional development project, here and now, that’s closely linked to our values and our goals? 

• We can actively take control of those areas in our lives that are within our power.

There is a lot we can do to feel active, powerful, and in control right now, in our private environment:

Activities such as decluttering and organising our belongings (READ MORE HERE), conducting home repairs or deep cleans, sorting through boxes of old photos, cleaning our digital files, clearing up the backyard or garden, etc.  

The experience that we can sort things out, that we can create visible results and improvements, helps us to see that we in fact can change our current reality to the better. This in turn helps us find more calmness and peace.

Thus, let’s ask ourselves: What’s the most urgent home-improvement project? What can I do to get started, here and now?

Easter 2020 will not be what Easter used to be.

We can expect the Easter holidays to be very different this year.

That’s not only because we’ll spend these holidays at home, on our own or with the family members we live with. That’s actually nothing special as most of us spend every day most of the time at home right now.

The special thing about these Easter days is that we are going to miss our usual traditional Easter activities:

Visiting family and friends; inviting people to our place and arranging special meals for the larger family and other guests; going on a long-weekend trip; attending church and community functions; having lunch or dinner at restaurants; spending long days at the beach; visiting traditional Easter sports events; etc., etc.

We might all miss something different, yes, but we probably share the experience that we all feel a bit sad about the fact that things are going to be so different this Easter.

So, how can we make ourselves feeling better during the Easter days?

If we miss something it’s usually because we had it in the past and we no longer have it now.

Instead of thinking about what we had in the past, we can decide to focus our thinking on what we have in the present, and what we will have in the future.

Redirecting our thoughts is not always easy, and – especially right now – we tend to think too much about what’s not good and what we miss.

A little fun exercise might help us to redirect our mind to the good stuff.

Easter Fun Activity – Searching for the good stuff.

The Easter Fun Activity is all about and only about the good things in our life. The good stuff in the present and in the future.

The positive things, experiences, feelings, etc. we have right now – despite or even because of Corona.

And the good stuff we expect to have in the future when Corona has finally gone.

How to organise the Easter Egg Hunt 2020

We can do this little exercise –  a special Easter egg hunt – at home, on our own or with the members of our household.

We can also do it on the phone or online and share the hunt with other family members or with our friends.

We can sit down and do it in one go, or we just start now and then get back to it whenever it comes to our mind.

(Remark: The hunt doesn’t have to end when Easter is over, we can continue with the exercise as long as we want. It might actually be a good idea to do it every day of our life.)

Step 1 – Prepare the hunt

First we organise our ‘Easter baskets’ which we can then use to gather all the precious 2020-Easter-‘eggs’ we will find and enjoy together.

We can use an old cardboard box to collect little pieces of paper on which we write our thoughts about what we have now and what we will have in future.

We can also prepare two lists on big pieces of paper or cardboard, hang them on the wall, and use them as collection boards for our ideas and thoughts – whenever we walk along we can add new things to the lists.

The labels of our two containers or lists could be something like

• • Post-Corona – What I am looking forward to
  • Corona-Times – What I am enjoying right now

Step 2 – Start the hunt!

Be prepared and willing to put some time and thought work into this.

Don’t give up if you first struggle to find lots of positive things you have now or will have in the future.

You might want to start with the good stuff you expect to have after Corona and then find corresponding good things in the present, for example

• • If you look forward to a visit to the hairdresser as soon as that is possible again, you could deliberately enjoy the fact you don’t have to take so much care of how you look like right now. 
  • If you can’t await to go to the gym again in the future, you could appreciate that you have started a new running routine recently. 
  • If you are looking forward to seeing your friends in person again soon, you could intentionally be grateful for the digital technologies that allow you to have intensified online conversations with the people you love. 

Look out for the good things you are personally experiencing right now but also search for the good stuff that’s happening around you, in your community and in the world.

Just start hunting – your mind will quickly come up with lots of great ideas!

Example of ‘Good-Stuff Easter baskets’:

Why we are all freaking out a bit right now, in the middle of a pandemic, and why we experience more resentment and anger inside and around us.

We tend to forget that life is risky.

We all ‘know’ that life is a 50:50 experience – that it’s sometimes nice and sunny and easy, and sometimes bad and dark and hard.

Many of us have had their package of disruptive and drastic life experiences which taught them that at any time something can happen that changes everything.  

However, during ‘normal’ periods of our life, when things are how they used to be or how we expect them to be, we tend to feel safe, and we suppress the ‘knowledge’ that things could be different.

When our life is mostly easy and quite comfortable, we often get to believe that that’s what life is and always should be: quite easy and comfortable. And predictable.

But it’s not, as we actually – deep inside – ‘know’. Life is fragile. It always was.

Life was never supposed to be just easy, comfortable and predictable. Being alive has always been and will always be risky and dangerous. At least half of the time.

We have never been exempt from the human experience of fear and uncertainty and risk and death. We just forgot that while everything was running rather smoothly, or at least in a predictable way.

Now we got a tough reminder.

Now we know better. Currently, we are all experiencing life differently than we ever have. We have never been where we are now.

It’s like the whole world has turned upside down. Our life is no longer as is used to be, and it continues changing, day by day.

Everything is uncertain now, and we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month.

A new collective experience: Crazy minds – everywhere.

Our human mind is trained in and very good at looking out for danger, and so it’s terribly afraid of uncertainty. That’s why our mind is freaking out right now.

The very special element in our current life experience is that not only our own mind is freaking out. Everyone’s mind has got crazy.

We are all in this together.

This feels good most of the time, it’s comforting and reassuring that we are not alone in this, that everyone else is sharing the experience with us.

At other times, it’s frustrating. We not only have to somehow manage to keep our own crazy mind under control, we also have to arrange ourselves with the madness of other people’s minds.

What can we do to make things better?

We are completely in control of our own mind.

That’s so good to know.

We don’t have to allow our mind to stay mad and crazy. We can take the lead by telling our mind what we want to think about ourselves and the circumstances in our life.

And by intentionally choosing the thoughts we want to think we can change our feelings – which are always created by our thinking.

Consciously and deliberately directing our mind to where we want it to be is not easy, especially at this point in time.

But it’s possible and we have numerous techniques and tools that help us to do the mind-decluttering work successfully – so that we can feel better. (Read more: HERE and HERE)

We don’t have any power over other people’s minds.

With regard to other people’s minds, we are powerless. We can’t control their thoughts and feelings, we can’t control their actions and behaviours.

Other people decide how they want to think about the current situation, they have their own assumptions about the future, their personal opinions about what’s right or wrong.

They feel as much or as less worry as they want, they choose how much anxiety, anger, frustration they want to feel, or how much hope, optimism, trust.

And they do whatever they want – they wash their hands as often as they wish, they hunt for toilet paper and other things if they feel like.

And often they get mad at us because we don’t think, feel, act the way they want us to think, feel, and act.

How can we handle the madness of our own and other people’s minds?

We can do some conscious mind-decluttering work whenever other people are mad at us or our behaviour, or when we are feeling mad at others or their behaviour.

We can deliberately decide how we want to think about the current circumstances, ourselves, and the people in our life.

We can choose thoughts that create feelings of compassion and empathy. 

These feelings then allow us to act and react in a compassionate and connecting way which in turn will make difficult situations or relationships easier and less stressful for all of us.

These are some suggestions of thoughts that may help us to feel compassion for ourselves and others:

• • We are all in this together. Everyone in the world is impacted by this crisis. Most of us are suffering from emotional, social, financial, or even physical effects from this crisis in some way. We can get through it by supporting each other in our daily lives.
  • The difficult situation in which we currently find ourselves is temporary. We want to prepare ourselves for the future and make sure that we still love ourselves and others when the crisis is over. The best way to do this is to practice in the present: We can, again and again, decide to feel love and compassion for ourselves and others right now, in this moment.
  • It’s okay for other people to be mad at us. We can take a deep breathe and remember: We are all human beings. There is no absolute right or wrong. Everybody is acting in a way that’s available and reasonable to them in that moment. We can’t control other people and we don’t have to buy in other people’s beliefs – we can just let them be as they are.
  • There is no way that all people can agree. People will disagree with the choices and the decisions we make, the way we handle the current situation. That’s totally o.k. We just have to make sure that we always can agree with who we are and what we do.

LITTLE EXERCISE

How could thinking compassionate thoughts help you to feel better about yourself and others?

Think about your current experiences – situations in our daily life, encounters with other people:

Do you find it difficult sometimes to feel positive about yourself and others? Does it happen that the ‘atmosphere’ seems to be polluted by stressful feelings such as anger, frustration, impatience, fear, tension, etc.?

Now imagine everyone involved had intentionally chosen to feel compassion for himself and the others: Would that make the experience easier, lighter, more comfortable and positive?

How can you actively integrate more compassion and empathy in your daily life?

Uncertainty is a scary thing for our mind

What’s happening right now, in the middle of a pandemic, is totally new and unknown – to all of us. Most of us have never experienced a health crisis like this in our life.

We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, what’s going to happen next week, or next month. Even the experts can’t predict what’s going to happen.

Our mind is always looking out for danger, and it doesn’t like uncertainty. Thus it’s totally normal and natural for our mind to freak out right now.

There is no wrong reaction to uncertainty

We all get to choose how we want to think and feel.

Nobody has the right or the power to tell us how to think or feel about what’s happening all around the world and in our daily lives right now.

Thus, whatever it is that we are feeling right now – worried and panicking or peaceful and calm -, whatever the feeling is, it’s totally o.k.

It would not be useful to tell ourselves that we should be feeling something different than we are feeling.

We can allow any feeling and be o.k. with it.

We are free to choose our reaction to uncertainty

However, even if we are willing to accept our feelings and understand where they are coming from, we should also be aware that we are free to change our feelings at any time if we want to.

We just have to take conscious control of our mind again.

By deliberately choosing the thoughts we want to think we can change our feelings – which are always created by our thinking.

We are the ones who determine what’s happening in our mind and how we feel about it.

Our dependency on the news

One way to direct our thoughts is to carefully choose the amount and type of information we allow to enter our mind, and to decide what we want to think about it.

Right now, the news industry is thriving. The coronavirus is the hot story and the media people want us, of course, to continue watching, reading, listening – all day long.

And many of us feel we have to permanently feed our mind with new information.

We so desperately wish to decrease our feelings of uncertainty about what’s going to happen that we become ‘addicted’ to the news. And to social media updates.  

However, the problem with addictions is that they usually don’t benefit our health.

In this case, a steady stream of startling media information can have negative consequences for our mental and emotional health.

Instead of releasing us from our feelings of uncertainty and worry, the bombardment with information can cause us feeling even more overwhelmed, confused, and powerless.  

How to balance out the incoming information

The solution is not, of course, to put our head in the sand.

We need to make sure that we get all the information we need to constantly adjust our daily life to new developments, regulations and restrictions.

However, it’s within our power to determine the amount, the type, and the source of the information we allow to enter our mind.

• • Limiting the amount of incoming information

We don’t need to be monitoring the news all day long. We can deliberately limit our exposure to the constant feed of news from our phone, TV, or the newspapers.

We can decide, for example, to watch the local TV news at 8 a.m. and at 6 p.m. That’s it. Or to check the news updates on our phone each morning for 30 minutes. No longer.  

• • Choosing the source of incoming information

We don’t need to be on all news media sites. Each morning, we can ask ourselves, ‘What do I need to be informed about today?’

And then we avoid all the third-hand information and, instead, search only first-hand information resources, for example the government’s health department website,  or our employer’s site, or our kids’ school’s site.  

• • Choosing the type of incoming information

We can decide to balance the different types of information inflow.

Thus, after watching the news for one hour, we can consciously decide to feed our brain with other inputs, at least in equal measure. Reading a book for one hour, for example, or listening to music for one hour, or a podcast.

What do you think about your current media consumption?

Is it helpful to you? Does it serve your well-being?

Or is it too much? Is it unbalanced? Does it distract you from any positive news? From all the good things that are happening, all the experiences that have nothing to do with the virus?

Decision-making in uncertain (Covid) times

Some of our current worries (read more here) have to do with the difficult decisions we have to make right now on a daily basis.

The things that are currently happening in the world and all the changes and uncertainties in our personal lives are totally new to us.

We are forced to make numerous decisions every day related to circumstances that we don’t understand. We can’t draw on past experiences and we can’t rely on other people’s opinions and decisions.

So we get worried about our decisions.

We ask ourselves: ‘How should I decide? What’s the right decision? What’s the wrong one? How can I make sure that I make the right decision? What is going to happen if I make the wrong decision?’

Every day, new decision-making challenges come up, like these:

• • ‘Should I be staying at home, not seeing anybody? Or is it the wrong decision? Should I instead go out and visit my old neighbour because I know that she is feeling lonely and afraid, and she has no computer to regularly share her thoughts with family and friends? Or is it better to call her? Or to drop some cakes on her doorstep?’
  • ‘Should I go and buy as many packs of noodles and rice as I can get? And as many rolls of toilet paper as are available right now? Is that the right decision? For me? For my family? Or should I just buy what I/we need this week? Would that be the better decision?’

‘Decisions are where our power is.’ (Brooke Castillo)

If we allow ourselves to get confused about our own decisions, if we try to avoid making decisions, or if we have doubtful thoughts about the decisions we made, we’re weakening ourselves.

‘What if there is no right or wrong decision?’

This simple question is the solution if we wish to dissolve our decision-making worries and confusion.

We can deliberately choose the thought that worrying about our decision-making is not useful and not helpful.

We can choose to trust ourselves.

We can decide to no longer question our decisions. Because we know if we start questioning them, then we start making ourselves crazy and weak.

We can learn to believe that the decision that we make in this moment is exactly the right decision for that moment. There is no better decision than the one we make. Our decision is the best decision we can make right now. Period.

This is where our power is: We trust ourselves and make the decisions we need to make. And then we move on.  (see exercise below)

Worrying about other people’s decisions

When we get mad about what other people decide and do, we are weakening ourselves. Because we have no control over other people.  

As soon as we agree that there is no right or wrong decision, it immediately doesn’t make sense any longer to worry about the decisions other people make or to judge other people’s decisions.

For example:

• • ‘Shouldn’t my neighbours keep their kids at home?’
  • ‘Could it be wrong that that the health minister cancels all public events?’
  • ‘Wouldn’t it be the right thing if they allowed us to make our own travel decisions?’
  • ‘Shouldn’t my neighbour stop buying and hoarding all these rolls of toilet paper?’

What if we just believed that everyone is making the best decisions they possibly can in this moment?

If we let them make their decisions without judging them? If instead we felt compassion?

If we focused our attention on the range of decisions that are within our own area of control? If we just decided what we have to decide and then moved on with our life?

EXERCISE

If you struggle with making-decisions, it might be because you overthink it. Or because you allow your mind to get crazy.

Take back control over your mind and your thinking.

You can choose your thoughts. Choose deliberately.

Choose thoughts that help you to feel better.

Feeling better enables you to act the way you wish to act so that you can create the results you want to have in your daily life.

Consider these or similar thoughts – anything that sounds good and believable to you, and helps you to worry less about all the decisions in your life:

• • I am a human being and like any other human being I can’t know for sure what’s the best thing to do. There is no absolute right or wrong decision. The decision I make in this moment is exactly the right decision for me for that moment.
  • I am able to become aware of my thoughts and feelings and how they might influence my decision-making. I can clear up my mind before I make decisions. This helps me to avoid making decisions based on feelings of worry, fear, judgement, anger, etc.
  • I decide not to postpone or avoid making difficult decisions. I gather the right amount of available information from reliable sources, and then I decide. And move on to the next thing I have/want to do.
  • I appreciate with gratitude that there are so many areas in my life that I am in control of and that I can make decisions about.
  • Making decisions makes me stronger.
  • I respect the decisions that other people make for themselves. I understand that they are trying to do their best – as I do.
  • I am willing to accept that other people’s decisions might interfere with my daily life or with my own personal decisions. I promise myself to be open and to listen. I trust that we’ll always find a practicable solution or a compromise everyone can live with.
  • … (What’s a thought that you can learn to believe and that will help you making decisions based on a clear and clean mind?)

Expect your old confusing and worrying thoughts to come back for a while.

Be patient with yourself, just push the old thoughts out of your mind and replace them with the new thought, again and again. Your decision-making confidence will increase, decision after decision. 

Is worry a useful feeling? Or should we declutter our worry-creating thoughts?

Worry is a feeling and as any other feeling, it’s produced by a thought.

We have certain thoughts about the circumstances in our lives and these thoughts create feelings.

And there is nothing wrong with feeling worry, fear, or anxiety. It’s our human right to feel that way if we want to.

However, every thought is optional.

If we are feeling a feeling that we don’t want to feel, we can choose not to believe the thought that is producing it.

The main problem with worry is that it’s not a very useful feeling.

It’s not helpful and often makes us feel helpless.

Feeling worry doesn’t change anything, doesn’t make anything better. The things we worry about are usually outside of our control, nothing we can do has a direct impact on the object of our worries.

Thus, it might be a good idea to decide to stop worrying, or at least to reduce the amount of worry we are willing to feel.

Letting go of worry-producing thoughts

If we want to ‘delete’ feelings of worry we first have to uncover the worry-producing thoughts in our mind.

We can ask ourselves:

‘What is the thought right now that makes me feel worried? 

Some worries have to do with our assumptions about future events or developments that we fear could happen, some are caused by our thoughts about current experiences.

Moving on with ‘better-feeling’ thoughts

As soon as we have found the thoughts that make us feel worried, we can start to search for new thoughts – different ways to think about current or potential future developments.

A helpful question is:

‘What would I be thinking if I didn’t worry about this?’

Searching for and finding the best suitable new thought is a very personal and individual exercise. We need to find a thought that we are able to believe, it has to make sense to us.

It’s worth the effort to search around for useful inspirations and to experiment with different thoughts.

Worry-dissolving thoughts – Some suggestions:

• • ‘I am / we are fine right now. Everything is o.k. right now.’
  • ‘I focus on the good things in my life – on all the things that are working, all the things that I do control, all the things that I’m thankful for.
  • ‘I’ll manage whatever comes up. I am strong enough.’
  • ‘All this is temporary. Finally, it will go away.’
  • ‘All this is a learning field for me. I use this to learn about myself and to grow. This makes me stronger.’
  • ‘I can always take control of my thoughts and feelings. I don’t have to worry if I don’t want to.’
  • ‘What is the one thing that I could do right now to make me feel better?’
  • … (What’s a helpful worry-reducing thought that comes to your mind right now?)

We simply experiment, we try out new thoughts and see if they help us feel better.

Then we practice thinking them as often as possible. (see below)

What if new worries come up?

It might happen that a new thought that felt right yesterday, is no longer useful today. That’s no problem. We just have to find another thought that helps us to manage our life better.

We never should beat ourselves up if we give in to worrying thoughts. It’s o.k., it’s part of the human experience to get worried from time to time.

The great thing about our thought-decluttering work is that it helps us to always be aware that we are in control of our thoughts and feelings:

It’s absolutely o.k. to feel worried, yes, but it’s also always possible to change our mind and our feelings if we want to.

TIP

Help your mind to get used to the new thought by deliberately focusing your attention on it for several days in a row.

• • Write the new thought on post-its and place them all over your home, at places where you will see them frequently: the bathroom mirror, the bedroom door, the edge of your computer screen, etc.
  • Send yourself an email with the new thought in the subject line.
  • Send yourself daily reminders of the new thought via your online calendar.
  • Use the teeth-brushing-time to think about your new thought.
  • Tell a friend about your new thought.
  • … (What else could you do to remind yourself of your new thought?)

Yes, you and I, we are not superwoman or superman – we can’t change the world.  

Being ‘normal’ humans, we don’t have the power to take control of the facts in our lives: We can’t directly change or influence our outside circumstances (other people and their behaviour, our past, external events, etc.).

If a strange virus comes up and creates chaos in most parts of the world, we have to accept the disruptive and unwanted changes it also creates in many areas of our personal life.

In times when our daily life seems to get crazy, uncontrollable and unplannable, it’s not easy to keep a calm mind and control of our thoughts and feelings. It’s definitely much easier to feel completely out of control, powerless and overwhelmed. 

However, we are not powerless.

Our mind is the most important power-source we have in our life.

We can always decide to direct and control our mind. We can choose what we think and – based on our thoughts – how we feel and act.

And there is at least one other area in our life that’s totally under our control – that’s our home.

We can completely control what’s happening in our home and in our mind.

• We are in control of our home.

We decide what we bring in and throw out (or don’t throw out), how the place looks and feels like. We are accountable for how spacious and orderly it is or how crammed and disorganised. We are free to choose the things we want to surround ourselves with, and we arrange and use them as we wish.

• We are in control of our mind.

We choose our thoughts, we decide what we believe – about ourselves, our family, our job, about our home (!), about our life – about everything. Then our thoughts and beliefs create feelings which fuel our actions which create the results in our life.

Many of us spend much more time in our homes these days than we usually do.

Public events and business/holiday trips get cancelled. Employees are asked to work from home or to take leave. Others have to look after family members at home. People of higher age or weaker health are asked to stay at home for health-security reasons. Some governments heavily restrict public traffic and insist that nobody leaves their home apart from running absolutely necessary errands. 

So what can we do while spending so much time at home?

We all have different needs and wants, requirements and demands that we have to satisfy, and that significantly determine how we (can) use the greater amount of time now spent at home.

Decluttering and organising our home is one of the numerous activity options available to us.

And it’s a particularly useful and helpful activity:

• It offers distraction from feelings of worry and fear.
• It makes us aware and grateful of what we have.
• It allows us to get active and creative.
• It prompts us to clarify our values and priorities.
• It helps us to focus on what’s important to us in our very personal environment.
• It challenges us to question our habits and to review the routines we follow at home.
• It improves our decision-making skills.
• It’s something we can do on our own, independently from outside support.
• It can be arranged as a group activity, getting all family members together.
• It produces direct and visible results and positive change in our home.
• It increases our confidence and sense of self-efficacy.
• It creates feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment.
• …

Usually, decluttering and organising projects have one clear purpose: The creation of a clutterfree & organised home.

And yes, a clutterfree & organised home has many benefits. (Read more)

However, in uncertain and unsettling times, the activity of decluttering and organising itself creates its most important benefit:

Decluttering and organising our home allows us to feel active, powerful and in control, which in turn helps us find more calmness and peace, confidence and resilience in our mind.

Give it a try.

Start a small decluttering project in your home and experience how actively improving your physical environment can help you to feel better.