How to look after your mental health in a time of crisis - Yana Martens EP#075

Okay, in three, two, one. So, Yana, welcome back to the podcast. We're just catching up after a LinkedIn post you put out saying, you know, call your friends. So I give you a call. And while we're having that call, you said some really powerful things about how we need to handle this process just now. So first of all, welcome back.

Thank you. I'm glad to be back here.

Now, today we're not going to be talking about video because you have another complete set of skills as a psychologist. And I just wanted to pick the conversation up for our listeners because I think there's a lot of people just now in the video production industry who are terrified. A lot of freelancers, small business owners who are very scared.

You and I were talking offline about how to handle this and so I wonder if you can just talk a bit about how you're approaching this scenario.

Look, I think the most important thing is actually understand how other people feel at the moment, especially when we thinking about our business.

I guess the main thing is staying relevant and staying relevant is actually understanding what people need at the moment and how I'm adapting my business at the moment. So I'm helping people to feel confident from the camera. But I think what's matter for people now more, it's actually feeling confident in general these days because it all start with mindset. So then we're going through some crisis and particularly global crisis like this. It's actually important to start with our mental health. Yeah. And staying calm, staying.

Not getting into panic, not getting stressed. Because if you think about it being stress actually dropping our immune system down and that's the last thing we want to experience than everyone around getting sick. So it's really, it's really important to strengthen our mental health and as a result actually.

Increase the chance to get sick.

Yeah, well, I mean, I did, I did, I did my Melbourne event where we had you along to speak. And then week before that, excuse me, was in Brisbane doing an event. And then last week I was doing an event up here in Noosa and I've got a stinking cold. Now I want to confirm to everyone, while I sound like I smoke 50 cigarettes, I have check my symptoms and they do not align with coronavirus. So I've just got a cold. So I think it's important to be very balanced at this time and if you do get a bit sick, you know, don't start freaking out you've got the virus. But so excuse me, I want to try and talk as little as possible because I'M just going to cough. So what kind of things Yana could people be doing to combat some of those natural feelings of fear and anxiety you might be feeling right now?

I guess what's happening at the moment, it's help us to understand what is really important for us because I can, you know, I can tell a bit about my experience as well. Then all this thing has started, all this panic with the coronavirus has started. I pretty much lost all my bookings in 24 hours because majority of my bookings was face to face. And you know you do get upset in the beginning and feel uncomfortable that it's happening but then you stop and actually realize that.

The packed calendar doesn't mean that you're actually doing what you need to do at the moment. And often we actually mixing up our overloaded calendar with actually having a strategy and long term goals because that's two different things. And it's really important to realize that at these times it's really important to concentrate on your long term goals because yeah, we get all frustrated like oh my God, what I'm going to do in the next few months, what's going to happen with my business. But no one cancel like 10 years goals, no one cancel them. We can still definitely concentrate on them and think what we can do in next few months. It may be not directly related to selling our product, but what we can do to improve our system, to bring the value to our clients, to.

Increase our knowledge and self development in general that can bring us closer to this 10 year goal.

I read an incredible. I'm a member of a couple of incredible masterminds. One that I run myself and one I'm a member of who I sort of support. And someone in the group this morning said.

Timing you must read. Living from a Place of Surrender. Basically all of us on planet Earth are just a blip in the universe miniscule and what right now is merely just an experience. Not good or bad, it just is. Don't judge it, breathe. Be grateful for what you do have. Not saying don't take action but don't get too emotional and bury your head in the sand. It will pass and look at the gifts and learnings it will give us.

I think that's such an amazing statement.

100% and I think a lot of people already realizing that things that they have been taking for granted and obviously practicing gratitude is really important. And I think during the crisis we can feel it even more. We can feel it, we can think about all the things we have and been Taking for granted all this time. And often it's all the simple things. You know, I'm actually do write a gratitude journal myself and I do write three little things every day that I'm grateful for. And that really helps you to stay focused on the positive and teach your brain to concentrate on the positive things. Because at the end of the day, you know, you, you might have a, you know, few arguments with people or something, you feel like it's been a bad day. But if you really stop concentrate and write down these three little things that you actually grateful for today, it actually help to change all your perception about your day. And these little things, it could be something just little conversation with your friend, just the sunset, nice meal, someone hold the door for you or I don't know, like little things that you realize that actually make you feel good. And I think the time of crisis like this really help us to find this gratitude within as well and start really realizing what we have and what we've been taking for granted. And we can find the positive changes obviously in any situation. And that's what I've started doing on my LinkedIn as well. I start posting every day. I start posting about some positive transformation that coronavirus actually already brought to us. And I'm not saying that we need to just forget about all the negative things that surround us, but concentrating on positive can help us to stay strong. And.

People might complain that oh, it's too hard to work from home, their kids home, but that's opportunity to spend time with your kids, spend time with your family. People complain that restaurants getting shutting down, but that's a good opportunity to start cooking again and maybe improve your diet. I think the whole thing should change people's mindset about staying healthy in general and look after their diet and exercise and so on. That's a great chance. Start doing it because now you have more time instead of going to the bar, go for a walk along the beach, just if you handle the situation correctly, you can actually get more positives than negatives.

I agree. And I think one thing I want to roll back on there is this idea of a gratitude journal and the idea of being grateful. Because when you write down gratitude, so you speak gratitude, you have affirmations about the gratitude that you have in your life. It changes you think logically, cannot be stressed and scared if you're being grateful. Because if you're being grateful, you're coming from your heart, not your head. It's impossible to be scared. It's impossible to experience fear if you're being grateful.

Definitely. And I think as I said, it's a great time to actually realize what's actually matter for you. And you know, some people really may be like freaking out that they lost a job or their business going down. And it's understandable. Yeah, it's uncomfortable, but maybe for some of the people it's a great wake up call that maybe they actually didn't like their job and it's a great chance to start a new career that they maybe dream about before. Something that they just they because they were comfortable in their previous position, they just didn't have this self motivation to make a big change. And now that this external circumstance change give us opportunity to make big changes in our life, maybe change our career, maybe rebuild our business. And I truly believe those who lost their business but who love their business and who created value through their business, they're not going to lose business. They will go to the downtimes, they reset, they build the systems and once it's all done, they will triple and double and triple because they will come out from this crisis stronger.

There's no doubt there's going to be casualties. But the casualties I believe will be businesses who have prepared for a downside. And that's a tough lesson to learn. I absolutely feel for any business who's in a service space that is being shut down because of the virus. That's a very tough place to be in. But I think in the business space, in terms of like small business owners who work from home, this is an opportunity to take whatever it is you do online because you know, consumption is up 79% on Facebook and Instagram. That's like having 10 more TV channels 24 hours a day with no content on. So the people are at home, they're very, they're looking inward, they're spending a lot of time reflecting. It's a great opportunity to help those people with your knowledge by sharing online. What are your thoughts on some of the stories you've heard from your clients? What are people really worried about what's going on for them?

There is different stories. You know, some people, yeah, there is a. People who lost a job, depends on the, depends on business. But there are people who keep finding all the positive changes as well. I think I would say the biggest concern for everyone, it's a concern about their older relatives. And that's probably the, you know, the scariest thing now. And because we feel like we can't, not always can help them, especially you know, all my relatives back in Russia and there is a lot of us who quite far from older relatives as well. But I guess how I.

Dealing with situation like this, it's all about.

Helping, helping other people around me as well. Because then people, if people don't put the self interest above the community actions, then we can actually fight together. You know, I might not be able to directly help my relatives like back in Russia, but I know if I help people around me here, I only can hope that someone, someone in Russia will be helping my relatives. And that's what's happening I think all around the world. It's trying, trying to stick together and put self interest below the community actions.

And you know, I do believe this is the year of rebirth. I think as a universe, as a society, whoever is controlling it, whatever you believe in, greater force is slowing us down. First it was the bushfires, then it was the floods, now it's coronavirus. I really hope, I genuinely and I believe really very firmly that this is going to be a really good thing for the world. I think it's going to bring us closer. There's an opportunity to be more kind, to help each other out, to put others first and not just think of yourself 100%.

And you know, unfortunately obviously there's a lot of political arguments at the moment and I'm not going to get involved in this because you know, we all have opinion around politics and so on. But at the end of the day it's not about trying to find out whose fault is it and you know, who's trying to create this panic or whatever else is involved, but it's actually.

Dealing with current situation and take responsibility for your action. That's all we can do at this situation. We just need to make sure that each of us actually take responsibility for, for their own actions. And yeah, there is no point trying, you know, like blame, blame political situation, anything like this. We now have to deal with this and also accepting the situation. Yeah, it is sad, it is annoying, we probably all wanted to pass. But we need to accept the fact that we are in this situation and stop being stressed, panicking, scared and so on. We need to realize our emotions, accept our emotions being uncomfortable because of uncertainty. And normal uncertainty is never comfortable. But we need uncertainty to grow. You know, the certainty is actually illusion. At the end of the day we can't be certain about our future ever. But you know, we kind of pretend being certain sometimes to staying in this comfort zone. But yeah, we do need uncertainty to grow. And the only problem with uncertainty, it's often make us Impatient, impatient. And also we can snap into people around us as well because we are feeling scared, feeling uncomfortable. And being angry is easy. Everyone can get angry. Being angry don't make us strong. And that's one thing to understand. There is no point, you know, shouting at the people in the supermarket and trying to rip the toilet paper. That's not make you any stronger. And I do believe that people who do it, they just, they just scared. And that's the way, and that's the way how they show their fear because they can't just. It's hard to talk about your feelings. It's not easy to actually tell people around you how you feel. And you would rather get angry than actually tell someone that you actually feel scared.

Well, I also believe, and I'm sure you agree with this, that all of the answers are within us. We are actually responsible for this. Each and every one of us is responsible for our outcomes in life. And so, you know, I think a lot of the fear comes from people just not being willing to accept that they responsible for themselves, not just wait for the government to go and help them out. I mean, the government did incredible things for them to support people and that's the right thing to do. But we are resourceful. We are a resourceful civilization. We've been through multiple world wars. You know, this is maybe going to be six to nine months of hardship. It's not five years of 1914 to 1917 and you know, 1939 to 45, six years.

We're not being bombed from the skies. We're not living in aerial shelters on rations. We live in a very wealthy time of knowledge. We have access to the Internet. We're at home with Netflix and books. There's no shortage of information. So.

What do you think from your kind of professional perspective as a psychologist? What do you think? What about the waves of. When something like this happens to a civilization, what are some of the stages that people will go through?

I would say everyone will experience fear in the beginning. You know, I guess everyone go to. Everyone go to a bit of denial in the beginning, then to fear and then to acceptance. It's.

Hard to say everyone will react different. But I think what we should remember that happiness is within us and.

None of the external circumstances can actually influence our happiness.

And everyone perceives external circumstances differently. And it's really important.

Now.

And it's really important, it's really important in general, but now it's particularly important to actually.

Look, look at, look inside yourself and think about how you feel and how you can stay calm and how you can stay happy inside. And then you realize that all these external circumstances they actually, it doesn't matter. And I guess that's what, that's what this crisis can, can teach us, can teach us that it doesn't really matter. I don't know how many cars you have or you know, like how much money your business is making that life is actually not about that at the end of the day. And money comes and goes, you know, we'll lose money now, we'll make money later. That's, that's just an energy and staying true to our values, actually understanding what's important for us. That's what's really important in a situation like this.

For everyone out there. I would suggest.

Understand what's important for you. Stay focused on your long term goals. Look for all the positive changes you can find. Take responsibility for your actions and for the situation. Accept the fact that uncertainty is uncomfortable and you need to go through uncertainty to grow.

And help others, help others. And helping equally important is actually receiving help. It's a two way street. So be open for people to help you and be open to give because it actually make us feel good. Then we help others people too. And giving someone opportunity to help you is important too.

And.

It'S all gold. It's all go through expressing your feelings and.

Not trying to be someone else, not trying to pretending that you reacting differently or anything like this actually be open and honest that that's how I feel and it's uncomfortable and you know, like I just maybe really just want to talk with someone or just that's sometimes that's all people need just be able to openly talk with someone else about how they feel.

Well, I've loved watching you the last week. Just put content out every day and address your audience on LinkedIn and just share how you feel. But you've come at it from such a place of service, such a place of authentic. And your post today just was talking about reach out to your friends and just say hello and ask how they are. So I rang you and then now we're doing this and giving this value, I hope to other people. So thank you for doing that because you know the more vulnerable we are choosing to be, the more we can.

Actually help people 100%. And I think stress is killing more people now than actual coronavirus.

And we need to remember that when we stress and we panic, our immune system goes down and we're more open for any disease. It might be not even coronavirus, but we Might, you know, get a cold or, you know, it's like millions of other diseases on this planet, we should remember it. And staying mentally healthy is really important at the moment. I think.

That'S kind of one of the scary things what we might experience in few months if the people actually start.

Being actually sick of us. Like their mental health start being weak because they don't know what to do, they're staying at home, they're going crazy. So that's one of the things we really need to pay attention to. So doing simple things, create a routine. You know, even if you in self isolation or anything else, you need to create a routine around your day, you need to still have some simple goals. I know it feels really, you know, tempting just to stop everything, go just under blanket and sit there for a few weeks and waiting for everything to be over. But that's not the case. Self motivation is hard.

Sorry, go on.

Yeah, so yeah, the self influence is hard and we need to make sure.

We'Re staying on top of the things.

I think another thing I want to just touch on is alcohol. You know, now is not the time to be hitting the bottle shop, buying lots of wine and burying yourself because you will feel depressed the next day and it will become a vicious cycle. And if people need to tighten their belts financially, now is the time to stop drinking alcohol. I did it for six months. It was phenomenal the impact that had on me. I now barely drink at all. You know, very, very little and very, very occasionally. And I know you don't drink.

Why is this important? Because I want to really address some subjects that I'm seeing just now. You know, we just closed the pubs England and the night before everyone was going to the pub and getting drunk and it's like, you know, Bondi Beach a couple of days ago, people wildly ignoring the social isolation rules to the point where the government have closed the beach. And I, and I've seen people up here in Noosa in restaurants, packed in, but disregarding their attitude is one of, well, if I get symptoms I'll sit at home. And I want to address this because particularly in Australia, we are not immune to this.

100% and people sitting in the restaurants, it's again, it's putting self interest above community actions.

And you know what, like I'm actually, don't worry that I, if I will catch a coronavirus, you know, I don't care because I know that I'm really healthy person. Yeah, I'll get sick. I might have to, you know, lay down for A week and so on. But, but I'll get better. Like I'm not actually scared to get coronavirus at all. But it's not about that. It's about how many older people I'll be in contact who might not survive because the immune system is down. That's, that's the main reason I don't go, go out at the moment, go to, don't go to public places. I still go for a walk on the beach or you know, for, for like little exercise outside. But that's the point again, self interest, self interest.

Above the community actions because it's all what goes around, comes around.

We all know just infect our whole economy anyway. And about the drinking, look, I'm. It's actually really funny because I'm drink much because I'm Russian. Yeah. And I have a full cabinet of vodka at home.

As all stereotypical Russians do.

But yeah, it's usually just stay there and wait for like some big occasion. But any.

Touching this topic, any addiction is just avoidance drinking, drugs, overeating. Any addiction is avoidance. And it just again coming back to taking responsibilities for your action and.

Being responsible for everything that happens with us. Because the locus control. If people think that external circumstances decide their destiny, that's external locus control. They like, oh, I can't do anything, I'll just go to the pub and get drunk. But if we are responsible for our actions, we realize like, yeah, we might have one drink just, you know, because it's maybe tastes good with the dinner and we don't need it to get drunk and go to avoidance mode. That's how simple it is. But it sounds simple, but it's complicated.

Yeah, it's simple, but it's not easy because it takes discipline. And when we have to say no to ourselves, you know, we live in a society where we're used to saying we can have anything we want whenever we want at any time. We can dial it, put an app on our phone, order something and it arrives. And I think it's one of the side effects of this coronavirus is that we're going to have to get back to good human values of like looking out for each other, caring for each other. We had a situation last week where we order our toilet paper from who Gives a Crap. So every three months we get a box of toilet paper and it arrived the other day and like we still had 21 rolls of toilet paper in the house. And my friend rang up and said, hey, what's the name of that company we've run out we can't get any online. I said look, they're sold out but half, half of ours. So they came around and we put the box on the drive and they drove up and we kept our social isolation and we gave them 24 rolls of toilet paper because they're a family of four and we're two people. And like it was a no brainer to share. And if we all share, like I'm thinking why get over this cold that we could the neighbors make up a spaghetti bolognese and drop it right to the neighbors who are in their 70s, like huge opportunity to be a community again.

100%. And it's, and it's simple. And honestly the country like Australia, we have it really good here and we actually definitely not lacking on food, on resources at the moment. You know, it's quite easy at the moment to help each other. And one more thing I guess I want to mention, it's a really good time now.

To create these healthy habits for yourself as well. Because you know, you mentioned it's really tempting, you know, just to go to the shop, get six packs and just get drunk over the weekend at home. Or like I know people buy stuffing on chocolate and because you're sitting at home you just keep, you know, keep eating. Really tempting, really tempting. But I guess it's a really good time to start creating healthy habits because staying healthy, it's not about, you know, going to gym for two hours and lifting weights. Staying healthy is actually introducing healthy habits in the daily routine. Now it's a great time to introduce some morning exercise to your routine, some walk around.

The beach or if not the beach, the house, whatever you can do at the moment. But it's a great time. You know, I can actually give a few examples of my life because then you give examples, it can easily relate to people.

I for a long time was a person who loved sleeping on the weekends and like on Saturday I could wake up at 11 easily. Like I just loved sleeping in and I was trying to create some sort of routine in terms of, you know, going to bed early or something and just, just couldn't, couldn't manage it. And from the, about two years ago, from the new year, I just make myself a commitment that I'm simply not gonna wake up after 9am So I decided I'm not gonna go too harsh. I put like a reasonable goal, just I'm just not gonna wake up later than 9am no matter what time I went to bed. Change how my life changed this simple habit, no matter if I Went to bed like it at 9pm or 1am I just wake up before 9 and now it's a habit. It's still maybe not 6am in the morning, but I usually easily wake up at eight in the morning majority of the day because of this little commitment. And then it took me a long time to come up with some morning routine. You know, I tried different exercises but couldn't really commit to something. And then what I did, I bought a really pretty yoga mat and put it in the middle of my living room. And every time I wake up I saw the yoga mat straight away. And it's cool because it's a middle living room, you just can't avoid it. So you just step on it and doing a little routine. So now every time I wake up.

That'S the first thing I do. Like I can't imagine doing anything else before I go to my yoga mat and do my little exercise routine. So it took me some time but sometimes you just need this little triggers to create this ongoing habit. And maybe I'm not spending two hours in the gym every day, but these 15 minutes in the morning make me keep going and make all the difference.

And you're so right. This is the time. People talk about never having enough time to implement a marketing strategy or implement a daily routine or implement something for themselves. This is the gift that this virus is giving us. It's giving us time. We can't buy time. We're now being forced into a period of having time. And so I love that it's an incredible opportunity to look at your life and go, how can I improve? And I think the how can I question applies to how can I support my clients, how can I support my community, how can I support my family, how can I support my customers? And that to me is really the opportunity that this coronavirus provides us with.

Yeah, 100%. So I guess the final advice is stay positive. Yeah, look for the positive. Think about what you can implement now that will serve your 10 years, 10 year goal. There is so many things you can do now to create your future.

It is sometimes hard to let go of the old habits. But you know, this external circumstances actually helping us at the moment. Give up on these old habits and create the new ones to create the life you want to actually look at.

I think that's a great place to wrap up. Yana, thank you so much.

Thank you.