A Pep Talk in the Troubled Time of COVID

The message below was originally sent to the students I advise, mentor, or supervise at Humboldt State University in the capacity of my job during Spring 2020 while the COVID-19 pandemic swept the global landscape, leaving death and destruction in its wake. It has been copied here in the hopes that it might serve as useful fodder for anyone needing advice on how to keep their head up and enhance their mood during any time of trouble. 

Dear Students, 

Long email alert- take from this what is helpful, ignore that which is not.... 

~~~~~

I’m writing this letter because I think it’s time for a pep talk. Most of us have now been isolated at home for six weeks or longer. We are past the initial shock of entering quarantine, we have likely hit significant barriers to motivation, and may have undergone waves of depression, loneliness, fear in recent weeks. We may be worried about our families, about ourselves, about how we are going to afford rent or all the rest of the bills, about what will happen in the Fall. I’m with you—I’m there. 

And I'm here to tell you that you can do this. I believe you have all the skills and experience to get you to the end of the semester in one piece. Take this time to look to your right, look to your left—see your teammates, see your coach-- remember we have each other’s backs. If you need something, you make sure to let me know and I'll fight like heck to get it for you. Remember: you know how to work hard. You are strong. You are a warrior. And now’s the time to dig deep. You can do this, you’ve been training for this. You have a wealth of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual resources at your disposal, via me, via the campus, and via your friendly coworkers. We are here for each other and we can adjust to changing circumstances. Tell yourself: change is easy for me, and I'm not giving up. 

For me, COVID has yielded a world that has simultaneously become more depressing and more uplifting. This is because we (as a society, as a community, as individuals) are undeniably taking some hard punches right on the chin, but at the same time, the soul of our very existence as a human race is proving to be immeasurably strong. I am finding evidence around every corner that the human spirit cannot be defeated and this brings me hope and motivation to channel into my many projects and into myself. 

Therefore, below I've listed some of the ways I’ve been getting through, some of the tried and true methods I use to enhance my mood, improve motivation, and generally practice being a well adjusted adult. Maybe  you will find a seed of hope in my words for this challenging time. Maybe a combination of these lessons will help you put in the extra effort you need right now to rise up victorious and triumphant in the home stretch of this semester. Maybe one of these strategies will give you the courage and strength to lift your weary bones, to try. Or maybe it will just be something to read other than your textbook… whatever works for you, works for me  

So without further adieu, here are my go-to mood enhancers for the troubled time of COVID:

Number 1) Let courage and leadership guide you. It’s more important than ever that we remain agents of change and solidarity during such a time of chaos, uncertainty and fear. Think of yourself as the key character in a history book, years from now. Will you be on the team that kept pushing for change? Will you raise your hand to ask the difficult questions? Will you put forth your creative solutions to the groups you are a part of? Will you join the rallying cry of your peers for transformation? Think about the scenarios of history that required enormous courage from citizens of the world... history is filled with feats of vast courage and leadership. And we are in one of those moments now. There is more need now than ever before for each of us to keep the resounding message of love, sustainability, and peace at the forefront of the conversations we participate in. 

What might this look like for you? Perhaps this could take the shape of pushing for clean and renewable energy with campus administration by submitting a HEIF Idea paper (PS- the deadline for this activity was extended to May 8th, that's tomorrow!). Perhaps courage means cooking a meal for your elderly neighbor or the single mom who lives next door. Perhaps it means planting a tomato seed in your backyard and posting a video of it so that folks can learn from you and think to themselves “Well if they can try it, I can try it.” Perhaps it means sewing face masks and donating them to a local hospital or a tribal nation. Perhaps it means writing a poem about your feelings of grief and sharing it with someone so that they feel a little less alone. Perhaps it means simply calling to check in on someone who you know is struggling. However you choose to contribute to the world and community is important and needed right now; it is essential to our survival that we act with compassionate courage. Look for the other helpers out there, join them, and allow yourself to be inspired by the actions or behaviors they are modeling. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and have empathy. People right now are aching for connection, compassion, and hope—so it’s a good time to do what you can to fill these gaps in your community when you can and in whatever way you can.

Number 2) Practice self care. While all of the above is true--- don’t do it at the expense of your mental, physical, or emotional health. If you have not yet started a practice of self care in your routine up to this point, now is the perfect time to start. If you were waiting for permission to care gently and kindly for yourself, consider it granted. I think of self care as a method of being kind to myself so that I replenish my own energy, self worth, and healing, rather than depleting it. The best way to start thinking about self care is to treat yourself with kindness (Example: rather than allowing your inner voice to be a bully, tell yourself kind things, such as words of encouragement. Reframe your inner voice from something like “Because I didn’t get that task done, I’m a bad employee” to “I’m doing the best I can, which is good enough, and it’s ok that I didn’t get that done, I’ll work on it tomorrow.”) In addition, try to prioritize activities that make you feel good, even if they seem silly. For example, take the time to take a bath or hot shower. Go for a quiet walk by yourself. Lay on your back and look up at the clouds. Sit somewhere and look at the horizon where you can feel the cool breeze wash divinely across your face. Call an old friend and indulge in the conversation. Eat your favorite food. Watch your favorite movie or TV show. Wear soft comfortable clothes. Take a nap. Go to bed early if you’re tired. Take 5 minutes to dance to your favorite song. Take the time to be silly when talking with a friend/roommate/family member- tell them a joke or allow yourself to laugh hysterically at one of their jokes. Take a break if you need one. This is a time when there is much grief, despair, and fear happening in our external world (and probably within ourselves), so it’s important to be gentle so that we can remain resilient, keep our immune systems strong, and generally not make things harder than they already are. There is absolutely no need to add stress to our lives right now (there’s enough of that going around) and in fact, we all need to lessen the stress when and where possible. (Here’s a fun blog and list of self care tips from Tiny Buddha).

Number 3) Let your emotions flow through. Related to positive self-talk and self-care, it is also ok to allow yourself to experience and observe negative emotions. The process of allowing negative feelings to come up, then observing them without judgement, trying to figure out exactly what they are, asking them what they are here to teach you, reflecting within yourself about what the root cause of them is, all of these are practices that can help you manage tough emotions in a healthy way. Many children are raised in homes or by parents or caretakers who were doing the best they could, but may not have had the capacity to teach or model the acceptance and healthy processing of negative emotions for one reason or another. Because of this, many of us have learned avoidant behaviors when it comes to anger, grief, pain, sadness. Avoiding these emotions often can make them bigger and harder to manage down the line. So what I’m saying is, it is ok to feel scared right now, or mad, or unsure, or sad, or full of despair, or grief. And while there is some wisdom to developing a practice of not dwelling on the negative, it’s also important to allow the negative feelings to flow in, just as it's important to allow them to flow out. You don't have to push them down. It's ok to accept that the negative stuff is real but that this too shall pass. 

Number 4) Get creative. While it can be sad and scary right now, quarantine is also an incredibly rich time to be creative. I have seen more people trying new recipes, sharing music, doing dances, planting gardens, doing new workouts, sharing videos of their families setting up obstacle courses, doing fashion shows… and much more than ever before. Dire situations have yielded some of the most creative solutions the world has ever seen. (Have you seen this mother and son playing pot and pan pong? Have you seen this dad who rigged a backyard ski lift and slope for his kids? The list goes on and on!) Give yourself permission to get creative. Take a pause, a collective breath to settle into stillness. Allow creativity to rise out of that space. Sit and draw a doodle, pick up and play an old instrument (I've been doing that myself), try yoga for this first time, organize your room into a new arrangement, sort through your closet and decide whether you have stuff you need to give away, take an artsy photo of some flowers, work on a Haiku poem, start a blog… it can be anything and for any amount of time (even 5 minutes of drawing can yield significant creative outlet). And creativity is like a muscle, you have to practice it to get better at it. One of my favorite creativity quotes is: "To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." -- Kurt Vonnegut. 

Number 5) Move your body. It has been proven that moving your body creates endorphins and endorphins make you feel good. We need endorphins right now. People as a species are meant to move. In fact, humans have spent nearly all of their time on Earth in a nomadic lifestyle, gathering and finding food while sometimes carrying their young (and even after humans settled down to farm 10,000 years ago, there was a significant amount of labor involved in managing the farm and growing food). Also, physical movement will bring oxygen to your brain and extremities, and will move toxins through and out of your body, and will break up scar tissue. I'm obviously not a health care professional, but I have found movement to consistently provide me physical healing and to clear my mind. There are some healing practitioners who even believe movement can help you get rid of emotional pain that settles into your body when it is stagnant. It doesn’t matter what you do: go for a walk, do some jumping jacks, pull weeds out of the yard, go for a bike ride, do pushups, practice yoga, dig a ditch, go for a surf, all of it will be good for you. And in any amount. Even just trying to do five pushups—and that’s all—will bring blood and new, clean, oxygen throughout your body. 

Number 6) Make a gratitude list. If all else fails, and you cannot bring yourself to try any of the other listed practices to wake yourself up, to harness motivation, to feel better, then do this: start a gratitude journal. It is scientifically proven that people who take five minutes a day to write down even three things they are grateful for will feel happier. This shows that you don’t need to feel happy to be grateful; actually, quite the opposite, feeling grateful can make you happier. And it’s something easy for which we all can go through the motions --- you can do it without lifting a finger, without it costing anything, without mustering any leadership qualities, without anyone else around… Just imagine any three things you are grateful for. It’s good enough to simply think about them and list them in your head; better to write them down, and best to brainstorm as many things as possible for which you are grateful, until you run out and can't think of any more. When I have been in the throes of despair—when stuff was really tough, when I could barely lift myself from the pain and grief I was feeling--  starting just this one simple practice of having a gratitude journal, it brought me back to life.

So, we may be down. We may be taking punches we didn’t see coming. But we have tools, we have a plan for becoming triumphant, and we’re not giving up. We aren’t going down without a fight. And we’re smart and we’re resilient. It’s game time, warrior time, and we can reserve our energy, care for our energy, harness our energy to come out big and bad and ready to be victorious. In Chinese medicine, they talk about it being important to reserve your "chi"—chi being the life force, the special magic, the breath, the healing energy, the source of all that is true, good, and beautiful that flows in and out of us all. In Hawaiian culture they call it “mana”—that magic that makes you alive and full of vitality. Now is the time to dig deep inside yourself for that chi, for that mana. Find it. Reserve it. Nurture it. Give it warmth and light. Keep it safe, let it build. Let your chi grow strong. Believe in your chi, give it power. Don’t give away your chi, don’t dilute it down; keep your chi vital and vivacious. 

Before I sign off, I want to implore you to listen to this motivational video if you need an extra pick-me-up (I think it's pretty good though I don't agree with every little thing). And one other very simple piece of advice that’s been getting me through these crazy COVID times: just take it one day at a time. Try not to worry too much about next fall, next year. Don’t worry about all the possibilities or all that can go wrong. Try, when you can, to just think about today (and maybe tomorrow). What can you do right now that will be productive? What can you do this afternoon or tonight that will help you replenish and revitalize your spirit?

I hope these thoughts may bring you a kernel, a tiny little morsel of levity in this dire situation we all find ourselves in at this unprecedented time. You’ve got this, you can finish your classes with passing grades, you can cross that stuff off your work To Do list, you can be a good family member, friend, roommate or neighbor—you can do it! And even if things turn out different than you planned, I'm still proud of you. You are all good people and that means more than anything. You've got this!

Keep fighting the good fight.

In solidarity-

Katie