For many at present it is a time of anxiety and uncertainty. Even if you are not directly affected, just glancing at the headlines each day is enough to be concerned about how this will all play out.
In times like these it really helps to have a strategy to deal with these negative emotions.
Over the past 16 years running our business, Great Ocean Properties, I’ve felt periods of heightened baseline emotions many times, similar to what COVID is producing in the general population now. Whether it’s caused by something that didn’t go to plan, clients, staff or family issues, the opportunity for stress to arise is plentiful.
So I had to devise a simple strategy that would get me through. Something that I could apply on a daily basis. After much reading, trial, error and temporary successes, the one mantra I keep coming back to is:
Am I OK for today? 99.9% of the time the answer is yes I am.
What I realised was that I was loading myself up with the fear of what might or might not happen rather than what was actually happening to me on that day. Yet in reality I can only physically deal, manage or act on what was happening to me in that particular day. Not only that, by concentrating on what was actually happening it allowed me to plan for the future and mitigate, as best I could, any potential future problems that might arise.
By taking it day by day and getting the most out of that day as possible, I found my head space was clearer and less anxious and therefore I made better decisions.
It takes some practice to reign in your fear of the future unknown and to concentrate on today but once mastered it is highly effective. You will be able to say to yourself, if I’m ok for today then I’m genuinely ok – and I’ll deal with tomorrow when it comes.