Don’t hold your breath

No one knows what’s happening next. Not too many of us even know what’s happening right now.

Will we extend Level 3? Go to Level 2 early? Go from 3 to 1?  While your chances of guessing right are significantly better than winning Lotto last week, right now the uncertainty is way more important than the outcome. We’ll make the most of whatever comes out, and we will normalize pretty quickly.

But we cannot underestimate the impact this uncertainty is having on us and our teams. For every person who is enjoying lockdown, there is someone who woke up this morning just wanting to come to work at the office rather than spend another day in their makeshift office. For every person who is happy to pay a small price of inconvenience, there are many more worried sick about the impact of 2 weeks of lost business on their job, their business, their families. For every person making the most of solitude, there are people struggling with the stress of trying to care for bored scratchy kids while appearing professional on a Zoom meeting.

Be aware that even your most positive people might be in the doldrums right now (which I learned is known to sailors as a belt around the Earth near the equator where sailing ships sometimes get stuck on windless waters).

Many of us (including myself) are achievers who have practiced pushing through, digging deep, picking ourselves up and making sure the world sees that we’ve got this, we’ve got our act together. But right now we have to accept there is not much we can do about our world, and it’s okay to feel a little empty, discouraged, despondent.

I don’t have advice for how to get ourselves out of these feelings. In fact, I advise against trying to get ourselves out of these feelings. Eckhart Tolle said “that which you accept, you go beyond. That which you resist grows greater”. Trying to talk yourself up and out of your feelings is a form of resistance.

Trying to work out why you feel like this is also pointless – this thing is like a rising tide at night, invisible but very real. Whether it’s the pandemic or the lockdown or something else in the environment doesn’t matter, it’s tapping in a vague and unformed way into deep personal fears like worthlessness, abandonment, helplessness, loneliness, chaos.

My only advice is to breathe. When we’re stressed, we literally hold our breath – our breathing becomes shallow and irregular with lots of sighing and yawning as we try to catch up. That in turn is tiring and causes feelings of anxiety.  When you focus on breathing properly, you take your mind to a place of stillness – have a listen to Sir John Kirwan talk about mental wellness and how to breathe in this short webinar video we recently did.

Beyond that, I’m working on learning to sit still and not “do” anything. It’s very uncomfortable so it must be good for me! While I’m not working on fixing myself, I do rather like the mental image that a friend gave me of floating down a lazy river on a tractor inner tube on a hot summer’s day.  All I have to do is make sure I’m facing the right way.

You may not relate to this. But be aware: it is a cast iron certainty that there are people in your organization or your house who are stressed, distressed, depressed or just simply over it. Ignoring it won’t work. Telling them to look on the bright side won’t work. Reminding them it’s temporary won’t work. Rationalising it won’t work, even if you could identify the specific cause. All you can do is acknowledge the reality of their feelings. 

And you can start with yourself.