Have you been able to show up for yourself? I’ve had a few messages recently that confirm what many of us already know. We are feeling all the emotions, especially stress, disinterest, uneasy. When we consider that “whelmed” means to engulf, submerge, or bury, it’s no surprise how we feel when we refer to OVERwhelmed. A double-whammy of engulfing.

I’m week seven of remote working, I have a bit of Groundhog Day going on, still loving not commuting to the day job, and certainly enjoying the 3.5hrs a day it has given me back. Although, even with getting up and going to bed at roughly my usual times, I’m starting to feel like I don’t have enough hours in the day again. I would have written this on the train, with nothing else to distract me, but now I need to find a couple of hours to dedicate to it with all possible distractions going on around me that I need to ignore. Quite frankly, I sometimes feel I need another extra 3.5hrs a day.

Stop judging yourself

We’re all guilty of judging ourselves, harshly. When you do, you don’t show up for yourself. Maybe now is also a good time to unfollow those social media accounts that make you feel bad, and telling you that you must use Covid-19 and sheltering at home to become a better version of you. Don’t believe the lies either, whilst there will be some who emerge like a butterfly, there’ll be plenty of people who come out of it the exact same caterpillar they were when it started, and they’ll be ok with that.

If you’re planning on being a butterfly? Good on you. I can’t wait to see the before and after pics, I’d love to see how your hard work has paid off.

If, however, you feel you’re a mess, and even the mere thought of taking a shower overwhelms you, that’s good too. Not even Martha Stewart is Martha Stewart all the damned time (and considering she went to prison for fraud, I guess being able to make both a pintuck and a pinwheel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either). To show up for yourself could simply mean getting out of bed everyday and eating 3, hopefully healthy, meals.

Right now, all that is required of us is to stay home, stay 2m apart, save lives. Nowhere in any of those government ads does it say that we all need to be out there training for a marathon. If holding down a job and making sure your kids do their schoolwork is all you have in you right now, then that is enough. You are enough.

As well as the different thoughts and feelings we are having, we are in different situations. Some people have been furloughed and live alone, so training for 5k run, or walking every day, perhaps HIIT/strength training is ideal for them, something to focus on.

What do you want to accomplish during this time?

Nothing? Everything? Somewhere in the middle maybe? What’s realistic for the next two months? Be honest with yourself. Be honest with why you’re not doing it. I don’t mean the stories we tell ourselves about being lazy, unorganised, self-sabotage, useless.

Your thoughts are causing the negative emotions. You’re focusing on everything that’s wrong, things that are not the way you want them to be right now. The truth? Nothing is right or wrong. That’s your perception of a circumstance that is, in itself, neutral. A circumstance is a fact. We have a pandemic. Fact. People have cancer. Fact. Its meaning is given by our perspective, and the feelings we create from our thoughts, then, our actions are blocked.

You can be as annoyed about it as you want, rant on it all over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, but the only person who is suffering is you. It’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die (origins in AA). We don’t change people by shouting at them. Has it ever worked on you?

For me, it’s been happy, excited, annoyed, anxious, and hopeless. Those last three do not empower me, instead I want to hide under my duvet. Thanks to them, both Friday and Saturday resulted in more than the usual amount of alcohol. I allowed myself to indulge, but by doing so I wasn’t showing up for myself.

I’m sure it’s not how you want to show up for you either.

It’s not that the family are being inconsiderate human beings, it’s not the pandemic that is making you feel scared, or that you are overwhelmed because of all the things you have to do.

Yes, I get it, it does seem it was easier to show up for yourself before Covid-19. Easier to do anything before Covid-19. That now we have all these people who are not social distancing, being selfish and putting others at risk. Plenty of people will agree. I agree. Repeating it over and over in our heads, allowing it to wind us up, allowing it to cause unnecessary friction with loved ones, is not helping and it’s our doing. It’s keeping us stuck.

What if you’re living with one of those negative people? Their negativity isn’t new. What did you do before to escape? It wasn’t always about leaving the house, though you could still do that with several hours queuing to get into a supermarket, and listen to a podcast in the queue to block out the negatives that are queuing with you.

Show up for yourself

Here’s what I want you to do:

• grab paper and a pen.
• take a deep breath.
• look at your surroundings. You are somewhere safe. You are ok.
• what are you thinking most of the time the last few days? Positive or negative. Write those thoughts down.
• read back over the list, what emotions are coming up? Name them, write them down next to the relevant thought.
• circle all those negative emotions. See how the thoughts they sit with are the negative thoughts?
• what can you say to yourself to feel more positive, relaxed, happier? It doesn’t have to be the flip of what the thought is, it can be enough to say you are safe, you are warm, you have food, etc. Go back to basics.

This is why you are not feeling empowered. If your best friend told you about these thoughts, what would you say to them? Would you leave them in the mire? No? Then don’t do that to yourself either. If no one is clapping for you, clap for yourself. Let me know, and I’ll clap with you.

We all have extraordinary abilities, and they’re different for each of us. We can’t change that we are in the middle of a pandemic, nor can we change that this isn’t how we want to live. What you let yourself think and feel matters. It’s everything. This is how you can come out of this pandemic as a butterfly.

If you are one of the many frontline staff who stepped up to directly confront this awful virus, the NHS or keeping our supermarkets, postal service, emergency services etc going, then please do get in touch for us to delve deeper into this for you together.

If you’d like to go a little more in-depth, take a look at my work/life alignment starter worksheet to see where you are giving your energy, what your problems could be, and put together a little action plan to take a step forward to your own unique work life alignment for mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing.