Recent times have shown us, just when you think you know it all and have it all figured out, here comes a pandemic, just to show you how little control you really have.
We were on a roll, the economy was smoking hot, entrepreneurship was up, we had a bright and exciting future ahead of us and then we didn’t. We got taken down by a virus. Our country stopped. Like, literally stopped.
Now you can go back and forth all day long as to what decisions were right or wrong, whose leadership was proactive and whose was reactive, but the only point I’m trying to make here is we lost our future. Now, no one had any answers. The so-called experts were wrong over and over, politicians immediately started hurling insults at each other, blaming everything on the other side, people started breaking down into two groups where one side said it was about safety and death prevention and the other said it was about freedom and our rights.
Meanwhile, we had no facts. No one could tell us what exactly was going to happen and when. We were told to stay home until we flattened the curve, but then we were told to stay home after that until further notice. Crime went up, domestic violence went up, parents were expected to become teachers and teachers were expected to become Zoom experts. Everything was turned topsy turvy and it was all because of one thing. FEAR. Plain and simple, it came down to that. We were scared. So, what did you do? How did you react? I’m going to tell you what I did, but then I want to hear what you did.
Anytime I’m faced with something I’m scared of, I first go to educate myself. What is it I’m really up against, what can I find out about it and what can I do about it?
I do that because fear is emotional and if I treat it emotionally, I become reactive, easily swayed and moved. But if I treat fear logically and meet it with education, I can be proactive and maybe have an impact on the outcome. So, in this case I had the time and I found out some interesting things.
I found out that although this was considered a novel virus, it was of the type we had seen before and had survived at extremely high rates. I found out that the greatest defense against this was a strong immune system and historically, we had approximately 97-99 percent of the population with a strong enough immune system that the virus would not kill us. I found that the best way to protect the population was to isolate and protect those of us that had compromised immune systems, which was about 1-2 percent of us.
Now I have seen little to nothing about improving our immune system from the main stream media and we obviously did the complete opposite of just protecting and isolating the weakest among us, but it took all the fear away for me. I was operating with my human brain, not my emotional brain.
The other thing that I do when something like this starts restricting our normal activities is to reflect on what it is I’m trying to accomplish with our leadership company and are we offering the right opportunities to the right people who could benefit from the way we view leadership. To that end we are moving towards more of an online presence and we are also coming out with a youth program aimed at helping young adults to handle their emotions and make good decisions with good information. Exciting for me and our organization.
What about you? What did you do during this crisis of our nation. Were you essential? Were you quarantined? How did you pass the time? What did you do that was constructive? We would love to hear from you about your journey. Let us know how it went!
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