Lockdown 3.0
Happy new year!
I have now had time to reflect and process that we are in lockdown 3.0
Top this with it being January and it's usual resolutions, goal setting and diet mania - this is a heavy load.
But what I find helps is breaking it down into baby steps. Here are some tips how I'm handling this. Maybe some will help you...
1. Eating - living solo has had its advantages and disadvantages over the lockdowns. The one thing I noticed the most is the challenge I had with keeping up with my healthy eating - the Medical Medium protocol. Especially coming into winter, I lost my way.
I forgive myself because going through this period was hard enough and I needed more comfort food. I'm ready now to proceed and am excited to start off with a liver cleanse on the 16th January.
Please don't berate yourself for having eaten more during 2020 - and please ditch diets. Empower yourself with information on health and nutrition that will make you strong and avoid illness.
2. Exercise - Tennis is out. Kick-boxing is out. Zumba and the gym are out. Real problem for me as I'm not very motivated doing online exercise classes. Exercising in the gym (when we could) certainly kept me sane during 2020. It completely helped with my mental health.
Walking is great so I'll be doing that plus I love everything QiGong with Katie Brindle and her Hayo'u method. She is the real deal when it comes to Chinese Medicine and her morning IG classes are wonderful.
3. Sleep - Wow! Who else has been having the most vivid and strange dreams. I'm sure we will see a plethora of books being released on dreams in the Covid19 times. But sleep is incredibly important so I am napping or taking extra sleep wherever I can to make up for any lack of sleep at night.
4. Reach out to people - during the first few weeks of lockdown 1.0 I felt pretty alone. Everyone was trying to come to terms with the new reality and I hadn't realised I felt isolated. Then I remembered I need to ask for help. I organised to go for walks with friends, chatted more over the phone, joined Zoom group calls and instantly felt better. There is absolutely no shame in reaching out for help. Please do!
5. Work - I'm fortunate to do what I love and love what I do. 2020 was Mapology Guides best year yet and I'm exceedingly grateful for that. But let me also stress here that I work extremely hard and that I believe hard work pays off. I can't wait to see what 2021 brings and am very excited about it.
However, my physical and mental health ALWAYS comes first, hence why work is at no.5.
6. Living with uncertainty - this my friends is a tough one and has to do with resilience. Most people find change very difficult. We are creatures of habit and fear change. One way around this is to embrace change, to see the opportunities it offers to go to new horizons. Another way is to equip oneself with tools to build resilience. Here I would suggest some therapy or you could get our Mapology Guide on this very same topic for some support.
7. Hope - To have hope is to want an outcome that makes our lives better in some way. It can help make a tough present situation more bearable but also can eventually improve our lives because envisioning a better future motivates us to take the steps to make it happen. I'm an optimist by nature so hope is never far away.
8. The Future - I truly believe the future is bright. In my own experience there is no gain without pain. We have all just been and are going through the most challenging 10 months and for many, it's all looking bleak. But there is now a light at the end of the tunnel and we are going towards it. Eventually we will be in light again, but in a better one. Less foggy, less opaque - but clearer, brighter and more powerful. So many good things will come out of this, but we won't see it for a while.
9. Word of the Year - I have been choosing a word of the year for the past 20 years. This year it's BLOOM - because nature, the environment and us humans are set for a period of blooming. Yes, we will rise and shine in the most spectacular way.
10. Love - love is everywhere, in everyone and in everything. Tell people and your furry friends you love them. Tell the trees and the flowers you love them. Tell your home you love it. Tell your work you love it. You get the gist. Love and our communities will keep us going, whatever hardship we are going through.
Love to you all.