Back in March 2020, it was easy to believe that COVID would end and life would get back to normal soon. Today, there’s no end in sight to mask-wearing and social distancing — and that makes coping that much harder.
In this video, Michael Grinder, the pioneer of nonverbal communication, explains why you may be feeling even more stressed as COVID continues. Plus, he shares an easy way that you can eliminate your internal dialogue.
Watch the video or read the modified transcript below:
Read the transcript for How to Find COVID Peace:
Michael Grinder here; I want to talk about COVID a little bit more.
You know, before COVID, I had two grandsons going to different universities. One was on the quarter system, and one was on the semester system.
You know, it wasn’t the length of the semester that made the difference. It was when they got about the 3/4 point — they got swirly. Then they had the “dead week” just before they took all the exams. So one had a longer time period before the 3/4 point, and one had a shorter time period.
Knowing that something is going to come to an end helps us gauge how much energy we need.
See, what COVID does is we don’t know when the end is. So we can’t sacrifice, we can’t concentrate.
We can say, “just hold on a little bit longer, and we’ll be okay.”
So it’s the endlessness of COVID that is so tough.
So if I may, good luck. Please understand it “ain’t you, it is what is going on.”
And as we said before, an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal.
So however you are, give yourself grace, keep it, rest when you can, sleep when you can, and if you can, exercise.
And I do want to give one hint on how to refresh yourself, no matter where you are or what circumstance.
If you want to do this, it’s a way of getting outside yourself, and it makes it so much easier to refresh yourself. And you go like this:
- You sit still and just scan your eyes.
- Find something that intrigues you.
- Start describing it. For instance, “it is probably about eight inches long, it’s two-sided, one is darker on one side than the other side, it looks like it’s made out of wood, it looks like it’s pretty perpendicular to the ground.”
Now, why am I doing all that?
If I go specific, talking about something outside myself, I’m occupying my internal dialogue.
It’s one of the fastest ways to relax and breathe lower.
From the series Coping with COVID: How to use nonverbal to manage stress, worry less, and make working-from-home easier.
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