Disoriented is a word I keep hearing other people say, and a sensation I feel often. To be so unmoored from the outside world for so long feels incredibly disorienting. The 5 things that have helped me immensely during this time have been:
Exercise at home: Keeping the same exercise routine as much as possible as before when I used to go to the gym 4-5 days a week. My old routine was to take a 2-3 mile power walk early in the day and then go to the gym at 5:30. So now I am doing the same outdoor cardio exercise during the day, which is so important for getting sunshine and fresh air while working at home. Then instead of going to the gym before dinnertime, I work out with resistance bands at home. For the first time ever I am really enjoying working out at home, and don’t need to be so dependent on going to the gym. It also makes me feel like in the future when I travel I won’t just stop working out altogether like I usually do. I feel so much more at ease and focused when I exercise 5 days a week, and there is no reason that has to change.
Daily Routine: My daily routine is a lifeline of sanity. When we are in a prolonged state of anxiety like we are now, our cognitive powers diminish significantly. It’s common when you are in a sustained elevated stress level to find yourself dashing about, attempting wave after wave of activities but accomplishing nothing. When we are so disoriented and scared, it’s difficult to select a task and complete it. How can you quantify the importance of a task when you and your family’s life is at risk? However there are many coping strategies that allow you to let go and come down from that elevated panic level. Once you do that there are great tools for accomplishing the essential talks of the day and keeping yourself moving forward: routines are the greatest of them all.
Meditation: Meditating has been the greatest game-changer of my life. It is truly the ultimate self care, wellness, spiritual renewal, cognitive function, and creative inspiration tool that has ever existed. The benefits of meditation are that they allow your field of consciousness or mental space to slow down, then you can start to identify and observe your thoughts, once you see which thought patterns no longer serve you, you can release and eliminate them. Once you start letting go of old and negative beliefs, thought patterns, and feelings, you can start installing new and better thought programs. Wonderful thoughts and beliefs like, I am enough, I have amazing coping skills, I am incredibly lovable, these will change your life.
There are so many myths and lies surrounding meditation that many people are actually afraid to do it. That’s such a shame because it truly is the most beneficial activity anyone can do, and it’s really easy. Guided meditations make meditating easy because they guide you along through the different visualization exercises and every one installs a slightly different message.
Intermittent Fasting: How do you diet when you can’t get away from the fridge? We are all probably storing a larger amount of food than ever in our homes, we have no idea what’s ahead for us so it’s only sensible to keep a realistic supply for “just in case.” For my family in the Northeast that scenario has already arrived and they struggle to choose what is left on empty shelves in their local grocery stores. So my philosophy is buy it when you see it, in my area the grocery stores are packed full and there is nothing I can’t get at the moment, including toilet paper.
Cooking rice and beans, pasta, eating bread, all things that I typically avoid, are now my staple foods and my waistline certainly increased but I was really inspired when I saw Ed Mylett say, “what if you came out of this quarantine, fitter, healthier, and more inspired than when you went in.” I really took that to heart, and this is really an example of dreaming a bigger and better dream and drawing a wellspring of vision and inspiration from that grand, compelling dream. I realized then that the only things I have to do to accomplish that, are control my portions, and harness the amazing power of intermittent fasting.
This gives my digestive system time to rest and heal, and gives my ample fat cells time to be used for their purpose, which is storage of energy. So today is the day that those fat cells over there on my love handles get burned up because I know that my hunger is my healing.
Hunger is healing, tell yourself that every day, as you enjoy having an empty stomach, and realizing that the shallow, intermittent hunger of an overfed American is really not unpleasant, and there are so many other things to focus on other than food.
Gratitude: Tune into your blessings, and you will find that your whole mood and spirit will start to uplift. We are like radio tuners, we can tune into any frequency, but until we raise our consciousness to the point that we can choose what we tune into, we are most likely going to be tuned into panic, anxiety, and fear. That’s because we have in our dna, the fight or flight mode, or the fear activation system in our body. Part of staying alive was being afraid, and remembering various dangers, so this is really part of our ancestral legacy. We live now in a world of unimaginable comfort, and while there are many things to be afraid of or that will kill us, we don’t need to be in that mindframe all the time.
If you are finding yourself so fixated on things that elevate your stress level, and particularly the things you don’t have during this time, tune in little by little on what you have to feel grateful for. Some people are going through such trauma and agony at this time that nothing can minimize their pain, but if that isn’t you feel grateful for that and tune into those things. For some people thinking about the fact that they aren’t quarantined with their ex husbands/wives is a huge thing to feel grateful for.
It’s so easy to look on social media and watch people quarantine in absolute luxury and glorious isolation. Many of these people must have fantastic food delivery services because every day they post photos of beautiful farm fresh produce, meat and fresh caught fish. Others live oceanfront and can safely go to the beach every day, that to me is the biggest thing I miss. We often get a few weeks of beach weather in the late spring before the May gray and June gloom blanket the coast.
Also here in Indian Wells unlike other Coachella Valley towns, there are no publicly accessible trails into the mountains, only top of the line country clubs. This is great for the town, as it very strictly controls access from the mountains. Other country clubs have trails that run through the mountains behind them and if you wanted to could walk right in from trails. So I would have to get in the car and drive to either Palm Desert or La Quinta to find a trailhead, which the ones I have drove past have been relatively busy.
So here is my example: I can fixate on not eating a fresh salad every day, not being able to go to the beach even though it’s going to be beach weather this week, and being too lazy to walk to South Palm Desert to the trailheads, or I can focus on all the amazing things I do have. I choose the latter and I am so much happier for it.
Another good example is house envy. The whole point of social media is to make you want to buy things. Few things are more compelling than photos and videos of spacious, tidy, sparkling clean, designer decorated spaces. We all project our dreams and desires onto these spaces, imagining how life would be if we just had that extra breathing room and sense of graciousness and ease. This is just human nature, and it’s designed to work that way, so don’t beat yourself up for feeling this way. The antidote to this phenomenon is to make the most of your space, and make it work for this particular time.
Break out of the set arrangement of your furniture and rooms and really ask yourself, what do I spend my time doing, and where in my home, and go from there. I always try to bring the element that attracts me from the home that is giving me that feeling of desire. When I dream of a really gracious, elegant home of my dreams, I always envision a grand entry way with a big table of flowers in the center. The homes that I have visited that were curated by real ladies of society all had an entry way of some sort, that was created solely to please the eye, and be an elegant buffer zone between the outside world and the sophisticated inner world of the family.
Although I have a really beautiful and spacious entryway, it’s still not big enough to put a table in the middle of with a gigantic arrangement of flowers on it. So I have recreated the feeling of that entryway on my sideboard in my living room. I putter around with it, rearrange it every day if I feel like, put flowers on it, arrange houseplants there. I like to think of it as my little style laboratory for my big fancy future entryway with marble marquetry tiles, gilded sconces, salvaged wooden panels from European manor houses, and a gigantic arrangement of flowers sitting on a French Directoire era antique marble-topped table. I still get to have that feeling in my home, and I have a physical world touchstone to that future world that I’m creating through inspiration. I have found a way to get pleasure and enjoyment out of something I don't even have yet.
Make the most of what you have, be grateful, and there is nothing wrong with dreaming of more, as long as it does not diminish the joy and the gratitude for what you have today. Most of all remember to take it easy, you’ll last longer!
All the best,
William Z. Brennan, Natural Lifestyle Expert, founder of Desert Mountain Apothecary: Desert Apothecary for Mind Body & Spirit: Desert Mountain Botanical Anti-Aging Skincare & Natural Fragrance, inventor of Natural Lifestyle Optimization