Covid fatigue is hitting a lot of people. Ups and downs, in lockdown, out of lockdown, in lockdown again. Aggressive debates on whether to get vaccinated or not. Pressure to do the right thing, pressure to stay safe and avoid people. It is a lot, right? It is times like these where your mental toughness is really tested out and some people really start to fall apart. So, how are you coping right now? Is it all getting a bit much for you?
Perhaps you have been working really hard to keep a positive mindset but you don’t know if you can anymore, perhaps you gave up on feeling positive about all of this a long time ago. Or, perhaps you are the one holding everyone else around you together. Either way, covid is impacting everyone. If you are feeling the weight of everything that is going on let’s explore how to lift that off your shoulders a little bit.
You might reach a point where you just can’t focus on the negative anymore, where you understand what you focus on determines how you feel and if you keep focusing on everything bad that has occurred due to the virus, your head may start to feel like it will explode. When dealing with many outside factors that you have no control over, it is important to put your focus in the right place. Focus on what you can do to make yourself feel better.
When everything is getting too much from the outside world, self-care activities are a definite must to be increased. What makes you feel relaxed? What helps you feel positive that things are going to work out just as they are supposed to? How can you start to hold less resistance to you reality right now?
I think a really helpful quote during hard times is one by Peter Crone. “Everything that happened was exactly what was supposed to happen and couldn’t have happened any other way, because it didn’t.” This means that, yes, you can think things should have been handled better, yes you can wish that things were different to what they were right now. But when you are constantly doing that and going out into your life saying this is all completely wrong and the way you think it should be is right, and everything needs to change for you to feel okay, is only going to leave you feeling miserable and frustrated and resentful to something you can no longer change.
All you can do, really, is work on the way you feel in each moment. It is clear that the circumstances around covid are not going to change anytime soon and quite possibly going to start looking a lot worse before they start to look better. Focusing on that every day is not good for you. Your job right now is to make sure that you are finding reasons around you to be grateful and see positives. This is not to be in denial of what goes on, it is taking care of your mind. Mental toughness, grit, these things come from learning to use your mind to impact you in a positive way.
If you happen to find yourself spiraling and falling down the hole of how hard everything feels right now, hey, that is okay. Do not beat yourself up for it. Sometimes we need to feel things to be able to move past them. The important part of this is to not allow yourself to be stuck there every single day. If you are finding yourself stuck in a bad headspace constantly despite trying to shift yourself, I highly encourage seeking outside help. A coach, a counsellor, maybe even a hypnotherapist to break through what is weighing you down.
When everything is starting to weigh you down, remember to focus on what you can control. You can control the thoughts in your mind, you can control getting yourself some sunlight to improve your mood, you can control doing some exercise to give your body a rush of dopamine, You can control giving yourself a little more compassion and kindness as you navigate some really bizarre times.
Focusing on what you cannot control makes you feel stressed and helpless. Where can you start to shift the way you are looking at things this week? How can you start to shift yourself to let go of some of the burdens you carry around in your mind? How can you bring in more self-care to help release some of the worry building up inside you? Take control of the things you can, let go of the things you can’t.
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