Tag: pandemic

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There is no “Us” in Isolation

Why are we more isolated than ever? Is it by choice?

Even prior to the 2020 pandemic, our level of isolation and distance from each other has been the norm for some time now. Is it social media? Internet culture? Streaming services?

ARE WE HAPPIER AT A SOCIAL DISTANCE?

With people living virtually and vicariously through a screen, the “need” to actually connect with others in real life has taken a downturn.

Where has this led us to?

According to the stats – plenty of suffering.

From deep loneliness and depression, to social anxiety and panic, to excessive drug and alcohol consumption, to complete emotional disconnect and apathy, to increased suicide rates. It’s all of this, and then some. 

ISOLATION IS THE NEW NORM.

How can it be that you can feel completely alone in a roomful of “friends”? Why are we indifferent to connecting and committing to other people in real life? And does it matter?

By nature, we are social beings. We have an innate need to connect with our fellow individuals. Even the most introverted of us have an inner need to connect, to relate with others, so be it, a select few. Personal connection and relationships are crucial to our well-being. Our individual health is rooted in our ability to connect with others and form balanced, meaningful relationships. This is why we begin socializing children even before they can speak coherently. The importance of sharing, relating with one another and connecting is essential to our growth. And this doesn’t stop in adulthood.

As adults, some of us may not make an effort to meet as many new people or be as social as we once were, but the need to relate and connect with each other is just as important nevertheless. The hazard of isolation is that there can be such a thing as too much time alone. This can lead us to essentially live inside our minds, our own personal bubble, and lose a sense of reality outside of this space. On the other hand, there is also a danger in spending too much time socializing and not enough time in seclusion whereas one may lose themselves, their own thoughts and energy, in the act of exhausting it with others.

ISOLATION AND TIME TO SELF-REFLECT IS IMPORTANT, BUT THERE MUST BE A BALANCE OF BOTH – TIME TO SECLUDE, AND TIME TO SOCIALIZE.

It is fairly typical for us, especially as adults, to struggle with this balance which inadvertently affects our relationships. In this time of collective isolation, it is important that we stay cognisant of this and make an active effort to maintain our ability to connect with others, as well as nurture our existing relationships.

If this is something you are currently experiencing, visit our program page under RELATIONSHIP BUILDING + CORE VIRTUES. We have an immersive section that deals with the balance of self maintenance and relationship building with many core principles around this that are sensible and practical in applying to your life.

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Imprisoned By Anxiety, Overpower Your Fear

The world is a dangerous place and life always ends deadly.
“Memento mori”

Living in western society we have been fairly sheltered from many of the dangers and cruelties of the world around us. But throughout the pandemic and in light of recent events, there is a collective anxiety growing among us. This is the inevitable impact of any war and/or event of mass violence.

Feelings of anxiety, panic, and fear creep into our lives, into our thoughts and into our souls. We’re looking at these events unfolding, in shock and helpless, unable to “do something about it.” Humans watching other humans in pain, violence, and death breeds an enormous amount of fear and reaction within us.

Real threats to the peace and freedoms that many of us take for granted in the west are becoming more and more commonplace as we’re watching, transfixed, seeing the world as we know it, fall apart.

Is it not normal to be afraid in a situation like this?
Afraid for your loved ones, for your future, for your country?

Fear is a natural reaction to a situation like the one we’re witnessing right now. But we need to be very careful not to be consumed by it.

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.“ – Frank Herbert, Dune

Yes, fear as a reaction is natural – but at what cost?

Fear can render you unable to think clearly. It has the power to dampen your inner fire, and rob you of your passion and purpose.

Uncontrolled fear can completely imprison you.

To continue to function in times of inner and outer crisis you need to stay connected with your inner self. Preserving a strong foundation within yourself is essential. You NEED your inner fire, your passion to stay in control and to claim your power over your own life. This is survival.

In fearful times, your self-esteem is your armor, your protection. It keeps you in control and able to stay aware of your surroundings while NOT being consumed by them.

A person with healthy self-esteem has an appropriate understanding of life. To the challenges life throws at them. The unpredictable and the dangerous.
Are they afraid? Yes. But they are prepared to keep moving forward, past their fears. They can navigate through the challenges of life without being controlled by the panic of anxiety or by the darkness of depression.

Breaking the habit of fear and anxiety is complicated, and many people cannot do it without a mentor or a strong support system.

I’ve personally been down this road in my life many times, consumed by darkness, losing control of my life to fear and anxiety. 

I’ve lost relationships, friends, money, career positions, everything. I’ve seen war and destruction. And I was able to pull myself through, continually growing stronger than before. Each loss was a lesson. And if I could do it, you can absolutely do it.

Sometimes the only way out of a situation is through it.

Many of us just need some guidance and the right tools to help us overpower the real life enemy of inner fear and anxiety. If you are ready for this journey, I can help.

Let’s work together.
Contact me at [email protected] with the subject line: FEEL DIFFERENT

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Your Accountability is Your Power

Accountability is a loaded word for many people.

Assuming the person accountable is the person who will be blamed and at fault if things fail.

Better to not put yourself in this situation. Better to be free of responsibility and let other people take accountability. Then no one can blame you. You’re safe.

Keeping yourself unaccountable is a weak approach in any given situation.

It’s actually the worst approach you can take when it comes to your own life.

Your accountability is your power.

Commonly, it is the easy route to shift blame for any perceived negativity in your life onto other people and/or circumstances. It’s easy to blame the government, politicians, society, your job, your parents, your past… the list goes on.

And so here you are – stagnant and trapped in this life that you can’t control. And you can bet that nothing will change for a while, if ever. As a consequence, your situation won’t change and you might as well just give up. It’s just the way things are. It’s life.

If this is your philosophy, something you must know is that you are giving away the exact element of yourself that can actually change your life – your personal power!

Taking accountability for your life is a form of power.

Yes, accountability means you’ll be the one accountable for your mistakes, your bad decisions, your failures, and your behavior.

But it also means you are the one in control. You have the power to make changes for the better and to start creating the life you’d like to see for yourself. Your greatest self. This is in your control when you take accountability for your life.

Many people avoid themselves and run from their responsibilities out of fear, laziness, immaturity or a slew of other factors. In hiding, however, they fail to realize that this is their strength – their inner power that is essential to opening the path to their true potential.

For as long as you refuse to take accountability for your life, nothing will change.

You cannot change other people. And changing life’s circumstances is challenging, at best. But you can decide how you react to life. You can change yourself. This is what is in your control. And the more control you have over yourself, the more control you have over your life. This is the power of accountability.

Taking accountability for your life is the most powerful thing you can do. It is the way to reach a true peace within yourself, with your past, your present, and the future you create moving forward. This is what maturity is. It is what responsibility is. It is key to self mastery.

Accountability is fundamental to your life’s purpose because you must be real with yourself.

You are facing your life and the circumstances that come with it and saying: Yes, I am here. This is me. I accept this life as mine – all of it. And I am willing to do the work to make it my best.

As unpredictable and challenging as life can be, especially through our current times of uncertainty, hyper information, heightened stress and panic from the pandemic, there are still ways for each of us to take accountability for our lives.

If you struggle with any of the above, with anxiety, depression or other mental-health issues, accountability can be a breakthrough step to feeling different, and taking control of your life. Let us help.

To start, contact us now at [email protected] – Subject: ACCOUNTABILITY

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Keeping Your Relationship Strong Through The Pandemic

The first thing to suffer during a pandemic, besides your health, is your close relationships – particularly, your romantic relationship.

While the outside world shuts down, it’s easy for us to slip into destructive patterns and habits as a means to cope and comfort ourselves. Combine this with being cooped up together with your significant other in a single home or apartment with nowhere to go, increased feelings of claustrophobia, crowdedness, and anxious panic can become overbearing. Given the circumstances, this is unfortunately quite common.

So what can you do to keep your relationship healthy and strong through the pandemic?

The foundation for a healthy and happy relationship is self-esteem. Strong men and strong women form strong relationships.

Your mental health, and by extension your self-esteem, will be one of the first things that are challenged during a pandemic.

The feeling of being “stuck” at home, frustrated by the limiting circumstances, restrictive rules and the uncertainty of it all, our inner strengths and core selves are bound to be out of balance unless we maintain a grounded foundation of self-esteem and focused perspective.

Patterns directed to the outside world as well as directed to your inner world, meaning your thoughts and feelings and/or your actions towards your partner, should be as clear and intentional as possible.

It’s easy to act out your frustration on your partner. Getting angry with him or her over insignificant differences or projections, can turn into a damaging pattern if you do not recognize and put it to a stop.

Pent up anger and negative feelings can explode into destructive fights and arguments that can cause long term harm to your relationship if you are not careful. It is in these situations of extreme discomfort and challenge that our relationships are tested the most.

One important practice to keep constant in your relationship during a pandemic is to concentrate – not on your partner or your relationship itself – but on your mental health and your self-esteem.

If you’re feeling anxious or depressed, occupied with worries, fears and negative thoughts, you won’t be able to support your partner through these hard times. You cannot put the burden of your struggles wholly on your partner, as your partner is likely struggling as well.

It is best to keep a regular exercise of self-reflection and inner diagnosis at signs of frustration, anger and discomfort. If you feel any of the above starting to occur, it is best to step back and look inward to find the root of what is happening inside. In many cases, we project our frustrations onto our partners because we are ill equipped to take the responsibility of working through the pain of the moment, so it manifests into an argument or a bickering match of little to no significance. These types of occurrences tend to continue to happen until we do the work of looking inward and dissecting our issue(s) rather than reacting.

Learning how to overcome your mental struggles and manage your own mental health is responsible and empowering. It allows you and your partner to lead a strong and bonding relationship through the pandemic, as well as through other challenging circumstances. The ability to stand together and support each other as a couple is a powerful force to continually nurture and maintain.

As they say, relationships are work, but when they do work and they are healthy and strong, outside circumstances stand little to no chance of harming them through even the toughest battles.

This pandemic has been a challenging battle to say the least. Many couples have broken apart, and divorce rates have increased significantly. Depression, anxiety, insecurity and panic have all been commonplace since the pandemic began and they continue to increase. Your relationship is being thoroughly tested and is at stake of bonding or breaking. This is where you and your partner need each other most.

To support and strengthen each other and your relationship requires a great deal of self-strength, self-support and self-management.

There are many practical ways you can start managing your mental health and nurturing your inner strength, your passion and your purpose that will lead you and your partner through this pandemic.

Part of my e-book “Lose Your Story, Live Your Life” is instilling basic principles and actionable practices to help you guide through this.

Get your free copy now by clicking here.

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The Vaccine vs. Individual Power

Do you sometimes feel like many common sense things that should be considered “normal” are now deemed abnormal in our society?

You’re not alone.

It is very normal to be mindfully concerned about your health. To be inquisitive, to research and discuss remedies, drugs, and vaccines before deciding what is best for you and your body – this is completely normal. It is, after all, YOUR body and YOUR health.

So why has this become so controversial?

Enter the Covid-19 vaccine debate.

Through our current times of constant questioning about what’s real information vs. disinformation vs. misinformation, many shared opinions are at risk of being considered to be dangerously controversial. Pertaining to the Covid-19 vaccine, any shared opinions and studies that question, or are not in full agreement with the mainstream ‘pro-vaccine’ narrative, are subject to censorship, and the person/people sharing may very possibly find themselves “canceled”, leaving zero room for debate or review.

This climate of aggressive groupthink and collective virtue signaling from those who have chosen to get vaxxed vs. those who haven’t, has created more of a peer-pressure pro-judgment culture than an informative one which has been pitting people against each other and keeping us divided. Some people withdraw into silence and self-censorship to avoid potential confrontation.

In some extreme cases, people are forced to make life pressuring decisions, i.e. get the vaccine or lose your job/career, lose the right to see your child, lose the right to visit family, lose friendships, and beyond.

And we’re all left wondering: what’s going to happen next?

What regulations will be enforced tomorrow?

If I’ve chosen not to get the vaccine, how long until I’m forced to make a life pressuring decision like the rest?

Where can I go? What will I do?

This pressure continues to build with each passing week while many people are living in constant fear of losing what’s dear to them.

The constant state of panic and uncertainty can very easily develop into serious anxiety and depression. The feeling of helplessness in a situation that is seemingly out of our control.

To evade this breadth of fear, you need an almost unshakable inner strength. You need to leverage your inner fire and passion as your power to fight it. Otherwise, you are subject to fall into a sea of deep desperation and complete fear.

These times we’re living in are not easy. There’s mass confusion and a plethora of information at our fingertips which is constantly changing. All the while, the social stigmas and political pressures of the pro-vaccine agenda are increasingly crowding over “normal” healthy people who are doing the work to think critically for themselves and their bodies.

However, this does not mean it is impossible for you to continue to live your life and thrive, regardless of these external pressures.

It can be done but it requires work. Deep inner work for many of us, a regimented practice. It requires you to be at one with your individual power, the power that’s in all of us. That inner spark, that inner strength that is fueled by self-purpose – this is your power. Once you have grounded yourself in this power, anything going on externally is secondary at best, and nothing is out of your manageability. All is within your control.

Are you ready to do the work? Contact us today to get started at [email protected]

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Denouncing Cancel Culture

Denouncing Cancel Culture,
For Your Health’s Sake

In today’s society it is becoming increasingly difficult to openly speak our minds, even among family and friends. This has become especially prominent throughout the pandemic.

More and more people are getting canceled on social media, banned from specific platforms and even losing their jobs and careers, merely because they chose to speak up in ways that may not fit into the current and “popular” narrative.

This has many of us conflicted, scared to speak our minds. The fear of getting ostracized is ever present. The very real threat of “just keep quiet, don’t question what’s going on, keep in line, or else…” is at the forefront of today’s social normalcy.

As a result, cancel culture is affecting us on a much deeper level than many of us may be aware of.

It starts on social media and/or mainstream media with public figures typically, then hits closer to home with friends or co-workers who may get their social accounts flagged or deleted for sharing information about politics – again, with an opinion that differs from the public narrative. This then becomes much more “real” as it spreads into our minds and psyches, limiting our very essence as expressive and curious beings.

We now self-censor out of fear of being canceled. 

Everyday conversations and interactions have become more commonly fragile as surface exchanges of small talk to avoid the possibility of saying something “wrong” and offending people to the point of being “canceled.”

This is affecting not only how we speak and what we talk about, but also how we think and feel.

We limit ourselves because of this fear. We are censoring ourselves.

Keeping yourself quiet when your inner-voice has real questions is restraint. Not speaking when you think or feel something is wrong is an unhealthy behavior. This is what people do when they lack confidence, inner strength, and self-esteem.

Is this what we deserve, a culture that silences us through fear?

Neglecting your values and your better judgment because you don’t want to offend, because of your fear of being judged and cast out of society. Losing your job, losing your friends, losing your family. This is not the freedom that we were taught to believe in. It is not within the belief system of our great leaders throughout history. It’s quite the opposite.

By submitting to this state of cancel culture, you’re losing a lot and it’s questionable if you’re winning anything at all for it in return. By playing it “safe,” you’re censoring your life out of fear and losing yourself in the process. You’re ultimately canceling yourself – your dreams, your values, who you really are.

When people neglect their inner voice for a prolonged amount of time, this is how the spirit dies. When you don’t allow your passion and power to live and thrive, you slowly break until you’re completely broken. This is a slow death for many, and cancel culture is creating an environment where this is “normal.”

But it shouldn’t be. It’s not normal, and it is completely unhealthy.

The longer you keep yourself quiet and comply with cancel culture, the less respect you’ll have for yourself. The less self-esteem you’ll have and you’ll be on an inevitable path to depression and anxiety. A life without passion and purpose. A life without power.

On the other side of this, if you do choose to honor your truth, to speak up when you see something wrong, or to share important information that could help others, even if it goes against the public narrative – this is a form of self-respect. This is you trusting your inner voice, your instincts that innately “know,” regardless of any potential backlash from the cancel culture mob.

It may be uncomfortable and challenging to overcome these fundamental fears, but this climate of getting ‘canceled’ has been programmed into us by our society for some time and is now an omnipresent beast, growing bigger each time we feed it with our fear and compliance. Before we completely submit and allow this to become our new truth, we must be willing to honor our inner voice and wisdom, and have the courage to confront it, even at its most uncomfortable moments.

With the right tools, you will be able to stay in your truth, connect to your passion and overcome your fears through individual strength and purpose.

My introductory e-book “Lose Your Story, Live Your Life” will give you some valuable tips on how to embrace this path forward. Your path is your power and with power comes the responsibility to share what you value. Share your truth, share your wisdom, share your love with those you love, unwavering and unfiltered with zero regard for the self-censorship of cancel culture.