Today, Be Kind to Yourself.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Buddha

---

It is so easy to be hard on ourselves for not coping the way we think we “should” cope with these changes. In many of my sessions this week, the message that I have been consistently delivering is this: Be Kind to Yourself.

There is no formula or protocol that we have been formally or informally trained to practice during a global pandemic. We have no idea what to expect. We are in survival mode at this point. So what do we do now?

WE ACKNOWLEDGE, VALIDATE, AND NORMALIZE.

We are doing the best that we can given the situation. And the situation sucks.

We are living in an uncertain time and it is causing us stress at all levels: financially, socially, emotionally, physically.

We are not alone in this. This is affecting everyone regardless of race, geographic location, gender, religion, social status, sexual orientation, age, ….

Yes, there are people out there who are making questionable decisions that can affect us all. But we cannot change them. We can only be proud of ourselves for doing what we believe is the moral and ethical thing to do to end this thing.

We can’t do more than 100%.

We are surviving. That’s all we can do.

This will eventually end. It has to.

We practice gratitude every day.

We live in a technological world that allows us to stay connected (to a certain degree) with our loved ones and keep us entertained (to a certain degree) during this time.

We are surrounded by caring and compassionate heroes who work on the front line every day – healing and comforting our loved ones, preparing and delivering our groceries and food, enforcing the restrictions that are mandated by our government.

We have the time to do things that we always said we never had before. Think about all those times before the pandemic when we wished we had more time to focus on ourselves, to rest, to spend time with our families and friends.

We are becoming grateful for the things that we have lost that we may not have appreciated before.

We are allowing our earth to heal.

do your part. stay at home if you can. practice social distancing.

and most importantly: be kind to yourself.

You are doing the best you can.