Corona Virus - Confidence Amidst Chaos

How confident are you feeling right now as everything's unfolding with the coronavirus? You know, a lot of people I talk to are very anxious. They're stressed, they're worried, they're concerned, they're glued to their phones, like, what's going to happen next? And there's a lot of fear. And so I want to, in this video, share five ways that you can have confidence amidst chaos, no matter what is happening. And this is a great test of that for all of us. So I hope these serve you to help you develop a sense of self, solid confidence to move forward during these times. So number one is this is training. We gotta reframe this as training because this being the whole situation with the coronavirus, because you could call this a crisis, right? This is a global crisis. You and I are all gonna experience many crises in our life, global, in our community and in your personal life. Crisis of your job, losing your job, a financial crisis, relationship crisis, loss of relationships, illness in you or someone that you love. These are all crises in our life, right? And what happens is when the crisis comes, many of us can get totally overwhelmed. And when we're totally overwhelmed, we're like, I can't deal with this, I can't deal with this. I don't want to deal with this. We kind of shut down, we try to run away, we make poor decisions. And so we want to develop our capacity to tolerate this. And so this is training. And specifically, and this is point number two, what is this training? This is training us in our uncertainty tolerance, first and foremost. Uncertainty, right? That's why there's so much fear. We don't know what's gonna happen next, what's gonna shut down next, how's this gonna affect me, how's it gonna affect my business or the economy or my career or my livelihood? Then there's health uncertainties. Is this gonna affect me or someone that I love? Should I do this, should I not do that? There's a lot of uncertainty about decisions you should make, what you should do, who you should listen to, what information you should take in. It's a lot of uncertainty. And uncertainty is always there in life. We just try to not see it. This is making it very apparent there's a lot of uncertainty. And so this is what we want to train ourselves is to be able to tolerate uncertainty, to be able to be in it and say, I don't know yet, and manage that feeling inside. Because the person's like, I don't know, I don't know. I got to Know I got to know. And just remember, like, no, uncertainty is good. Uncertainty makes me stronger. By going into uncertainty, I can actually draw strength from uncertainty. So how do you do that when you're starting to feel that sense of uncertainty building up and there's that, like, panicky feeling inside? Breathe in deep. And just, like, imagine yourself as you're breathing and you're breathing, you're filling in your whole stomach and your lungs, and the breath just keeps going, and you're imagining your energy going out even further, and you're just, like, much bigger than you are. You go beyond you, because that's the. All the fear that comes from with uncertainty is like, what about me? What's gonna happen to me? Ah. And it's like, it's bigger and you're connected and you can handle this. That's the biggest way. And it's like, I can handle this. I can handle this. Any other story in your mind says you can't. It's just. It's uncomfortable. It doesn't feel good. No one's like, yes, we got to figure out some tough things about health policy and our own personal lives and our. You know, it's like, no, this is freaking uncomfortable, but we can handle it. You can handle it. And the more you remind yourself of that and you breathe into it, the stronger you become. The third way that this is to handle this and develop our confidence in this moment of time is to be able to expand your capacity to hold multiple perspectives. And this is so valuable beyond just this issue. When we're uncertain and we're afraid, we try to get certainty by saying, oh, I know what's going on. This is how it is. And so people will put forth a very strong, particular opinion. This is how it is. This is what everyone should do. This is the solution to the coronavirus and everything else done. And it's much more complex than that. There's layers and layers and layers of complexity. So to be able to hold multiple perspectives at the same time. You know, some people will say, this is an extreme case. We need to go on total social lockdown now, or else we're gonna have a highly fatal pandemic. There's other people that say, you know what? This has affected a fraction of the people that the flu does keep going, business as usual. People just freaking out, living in fear. Right? Those are kind of two extremes. Can you hold multiple perspectives at the same time? Can you hold those two and then three others all at the same time and then still be able to? Because by holding all of those and not saying it's only one way, it's all of these ways, then you can make better decisions. You have more options, you have more intelligence, more complexity in your consciousness. The fourth thing that we can do to develop confidence in this time of chaos and uncertainty around the coronavirus is, is to see that we're all connected. I mean, what a way to see it, right? In the sense that there's this virus spreading and we're like, I don't want to see it that way. But I mean, look at this. Like you are connected to someone on the other side of the world within days or weeks. You are connected in the sense that when we get sick or we get afraid of being sick, are we afraid of, like, what do we care about? We care about those that we love. We care about our families, we care about our health. And it's no different whether you're in the US or China or Italy or country in Africa. It doesn't matter where you are. We're the same in that way. And we're like 99% the same as all humans. And then 1% different. And that 1% is beautiful. It's diversity. It's crazy differences in perceptions and cultures and behaviors and attitudes and everything, activities. It's vastly different. But that's on top of a 99% core humanity. We're all the same. We want love, we want connection, we want to stay safe, we want happiness. So really seeing that can be a beautiful blessing that comes out amidst the fear and the chaos. And the last thing I would say, and this is probably one of the most powerful strategies that I use with myself and with clients, is your capacity to zoom out. Zoom out, zoom out. At my live events, inevitably I'll share at least once at the event, some perspective changing things that has people really zoom out. Usually I go into like, showing images of galaxies or the scale and scope of the universe just to have people be like, whoa, never thought about things that way, right? So we want to zoom out a little bit and say, you know, what are we doing? We're humans on this planet. We don't exactly know what's going on, why we're here, how it's all unfolding. And there's one thing we know for certain in this life, only one, and that none of us are going to get out alive. Everyone dies. And we don't want to use us as some sort of flippant statement. It's like, well, who cares about the coronavirus? Everyone dies. I mean, I'm not saying it that way at all. But I am saying that there is an inevitable order to these things. And the more we can surrender, we can say, yeah, things can happen to me, to loved ones. It could be this coronavirus. It could just be like. I mean, way more people are dying from cancer, from heart disease, from car accidents. So that can happen. That can happen. And it might sound like a disturbing message or a disheartening message, but it's actually the most liberating thing possible because then it reminds us to surrender. To surrender. And I believe in this so much that I got this tattoo many years ago, put it on my arm. I don't know if you can read that. It says, thank you, I surrender. And I put that on my arm so I could see that literally every day, that no matter what happens, no matter what unfolds, my response is to, like, look up to the cosmos, to the divine, and say, thank you. I surrender to what's happening right now. And of course you're going to take effective action. You're going to take information to keep yourself safe or figure out what's going to do to help people in your community and your families. But beyond that, we got to surrender. There's something greater at play here. And you're held, you're guided. If you tune into that and feel that you will navigate this. And being held and guided doesn't mean that nothing that. That no one dies because everyone dies. But do you see what I'm saying? If we can tap into that, there's a deep source of relief and of confidence that can emerge, then gives you that power, and you bring that out to say, hey, we're all mostly the same underneath. I want to care, I want to contribute. I want to give in the ways that I can. And then from that, we're able to hold multiple perspectives. And then from that, we're able to tolerate uncertainty. And then from that, we're able to say, you know, this is actually good for me. This is training me for crisis in life. This is strengthening me. Now, what decisions can I make? Who can I serve? What can I do right now, today to figure this out? Beautiful. Thanks for being with me. I wish you all the best during this time. And I'll be sharing more about how you can remain confident in your center and thriving until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.