Fear. Anxiety. Overwhelm. Uncertainty.

These are all emotions we’re feeling right now amid the COVID-19. It seems like this pandemic is taking over every minute of your day, seven days a week. 

Now is when we need to pause and think about our thoughts, separating what’s true. This is the foundation of using Energy Shifts and Thought Work to master your life, relationships and career. 

The components of energy are:

Thoughts: The meaning you assign to your experience of life (your circumstances), including opinions, judgment, assumptions, interpretations, and beliefs.  Some of our thoughts are conscious, and some of them are automatic (unconscious).

Feelings: Our emotions (happy, sad, anxious) causedby our thoughts.  The human experience suggests that we will experience a mix of negative and positive emotions.  The goal is not to be happy all of the time.  Most of us mistakenly think that things outside of us cause us to feel.  This simply isn’t true.

Actions: What we do, or don’t do, in response to our feelings.  This includes acting, reacting, or not acting.  It is important to know the difference between activity and action.  Action produces results.  Activity only pretends to be useful.

Results: Determined by our actions. The sum total of our actions makes up our life.  The result you create will generally prove your thought true.

Where we generally struggle is not understanding how to separate what we have control over, from what we do nothave control over.  The way to curb this is to separate FACTS from the rest of your story. We call these circumstances.

Circumstances: Strictly the facts, without the drama, opinions, adjectives, descriptors.  Essentially, what is happening in the world around us. This is our “external” environment.  There is no inherent meaning to a circumstance, and it is neutral until we’ve given it meaning by way of our thoughts.  .  

Let’s take the pandemic and look at it energetically:

Circumstance:

World health leaders have labeled a new coronavirus as a pandemic and have asked much of the world to stay home in order to slow its spread.

Thought:

‘This scary pandemic is taking over, overwhelming my life, and I don’t know what to do.’

Feeling:

Anxious (other common emotions that would produce similar action might include fear, uncertainty, overwhelm)

Action:

Possibly overeating, over-drinking, endless social media scrolling, abundant worry, and procrastination.  

Said differently, these are all “activities”, or inaction.

Result:

You don’t know what to do, so you don’t DO anything. 

This pattern of thinking will probably leave you feeling increasingly worse. You’re in the cycle of negative thoughts producing negative emotions and the byproduct is inaction. By not taking action, you have proven true the thought of ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Your first response to this thought download might be, ‘but the pandemic is scary, I didn’t make it that way.’ Your brain always wants to prove something to be true. It is looking for evidence that supports what your thinking, that the pandemic is scary. The challenge is noticing that first thought, labeling it as normal (because your human brain is just doing what it is designed to do), and then changing that thought about the circumstance to something more neutral.

This is an excellent example of a time when you don’t want to be ‘happy’ about a circumstance, especially if that circumstance includes loss of a job, loss of income, loss of connection, and so on.

A great rule of thumb is that the new thought should not disagreewith the old thought. The new thought doesn’t have to be true, it just needs to be believable.  For that reason, an ‘opposite’ thought might be rejected because it argues with the original thought and does not feel believable to your brain.

Let’s look at another possible thought to the previous example.

Circumstance: (this doesn't change)

World health leaders have labeled a new coronavirus as a pandemic and have asked much of the world to stay home in order to slow its spread.

Thought:

‘I’m going to take this stay-at-home/work-from-home opportunity to ____"

(adapt my business processes, add a new service, spend more time with my kids, finish a project, learn a new language, de-clutter my life)

With the change in thought, our feelings, actions, and results immediately change. There is an opportunity to grow rather than shrink inside our couch cushions.  When we take action from a higher level of energy, it will always produce a result – not always the ‘intended’ result, but a result nonetheless.

It’s important to recognize, we all face negative emotions like anxiety. It’s essential not to beat yourself up for it, but rather acknowledge it. By being more aware of your thoughts and feelings, you can maintain control over your energy. 

When you push against negative emotions (avoid or resist), there are energetic consequences that might unintentionally take you further away from your goals. And that cycle gets super ugly, super fast because it reinforces a powerless state.

The key is to watch it. When it begins, recognize it. Then breathe. Breathe deeply and processthe emotion.

Taking a moment to concentrate on the simple act of breathing can put us in a better place to tell ourselves, our thoughts cause [insert your negative emotion here], and it can’t hurt us. Feelings aren’t fatal.  Breathing may prevent you from triggering a fight or flight response, stopping you from running away from a problem or lashing out about it.

So, yes, every problem is a thought problem, even a global pandemic.

Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a pandemic and your ego taking a hit during an argument. So take some time and create some separation between you and your experience of the world around you.

In difficult times, trying to fight it all day won’t work and will likely make you more anxious, agitated and exhausted. It’s a lot of work to stay in that energy all day. If you need it, give yourself 10 minutes to worry. Ten minutes to stress, over-analyze, or dream up a worst-case scenario. Then be done. And realize that worst-case scenario is not fact—it’s a thought we can control. 

We can overcome fear and anxiety by changing our initial thoughts. Our results are a direct response to our thoughts. When we think differently about the circumstance, we feel differently, act differently, and ultimately produce better results.