Coronavirus Coping Tips

Tips on being productive with work when working from home

• Concentrate on completing your tasks and don’t let any distractions sideline you from doing this. Make a mental plan of how to complete each task and follow it. This will train your mind to make sure you get your tasks done. If you have a deadline to reach, pace yourself.
• Just because I live alone doesn’t mean I don’t have distractions. The distractions can come from outside my living place, inside my brain, inside my body or my phone. Understand that distractions DO happen and WILL happen. It is ok, it is a part of life. Just try to come back from the distractions quickly. When one happens, try to deal with it quickly and go back to your tasks at hand.
• If you have a lot of tasks to do with work, especially if it is on the computer, make sure you take adequate breaks. Get up and stretch your legs, your body and rest your eyes some. This is essential when doing a lot of computer work.
• The last thing, if you have the opportunity and money to do so, try to make the area you work in be ergonomically comfortable. I have low back pain issues and circulation issues in my one leg and the chair I had just was not adequate and I would end up having a lot of pain after I finished my work on the computer. If possibly, try to put your laptop or your screen up to your eye level in some way, get something to use as a footstool and make the chair you sit in more comfortably or, if possible, get a proper, ergonomic office chair. It is an investment into your body health and it is totally worth it.

Tips for maintaining a positive mindset and avoiding fear—for yourself.

• Realize that fear is inevitable, you cannot avoid it. What you can do is accept it, manage it and reframe it into something different. I had immense fear initially of getting this virus, it made me freaked out and paranoid at first. One thing that helped me was meditation. I did some mediation to calm my mind and it did help. I also talked to people but I talked to people who were positive and would not add to my fears. I talked to people through Skype, WeChat and over the phone who listened to my fears, acknowledged them and helped me work through them. Fear is there for a reason and you cannot run away from it. What you can do is deal with it, accept that it is happening, don’t beat yourself up for feeling it and then find healthy ways to dissipate it within your body, mind and soul.
• Anxiety may also come. It came for me. It REALLY magnified anxiousness and anxiety in me BIG TIME. I had to talk through it.
• I shifted my focus from freaking out about this virus to finding ways to be positive about it. I realized that this was an opportunity to do deep introspection and I spent a lot of time doing this. It helped me understand myself deeper and strengthen my awareness of what makes me tick.

Tips for maintaining a positive mindset and avoiding fear—for your family.

• Keep frequent communication open with your relatives. Allow each other to share honest emotions and thoughts and don’t dwell on the negative ones so much. Get the anxiety and fear out and then move to focus on positive actions you can take during this time.
• Encourage each other to read the news but don’t read or listen to it for very long and try not to get caught up in the sensationalism aspect of the news reporting. This is very important. Use your own common sense and keep yourself informed but don’t get caught up into all the consistent and constant oversaturation and hype of the news coverage. Set a time period each day that you will inform yourself of what is going on and then stay away from the news the rest of the time.
• Sharing words of encouragement and appreciation for your family can go a long way. Take this opportunity to share your feelings and thoughts with your family and let them know how much you care and love them. This is very important.

Tips to try to stay virus free

• One thing that I love and am into is essential oils. I use DoTerra essential oils a lot and I have done a lot of reading, research and conversing about these. I am in a WeChat group that is all about these oils and they provide a lot of information about them. I started running both of my essential oil diffusers in my apt with oils that helped to cleanse the air and were good for the lungs. This has helped me in feel better to actually do something to help myself.
• I must admit, I brought the germaphobe out of me and made sure to not touch anything and clean my hands a lot during the height of this disaster here. I usually do that anyway but I did it even more so at that time.
• I started to make sure I consistently ate fruits and vegetables every day. I focused on trying to keep my immune system up and doing this helps. Taking Vitamin D3 and Vitamin C both help as well.

–written by Maria Mocha © 2020