How To Use Coronavirus Fear To Your Advantage
Here's how to turn your fear around.
by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels As the world experiences the COVID-19 pandemic, there's a lot of coronavirus fear. This is understandable, as everyone is in completely new territory with no end in sight.
But in order to learn how to use your fear to your advantage, you need to know how to take control of that fear, which means pinpointing what exactly is scaring you so much right now and trying to learn how to overcome it.
Your main fear may lie directly with illness and suffering. Or it may have to do with the sudden disappearance of healthcare as you knew it, a shortage of food, and a lack of bonding.
Or perhaps it has something to do with eroding social freedom, a potential collapse of the economy, and the shortage of jobs. Whatever your version of concern… How are you handling these thoughts?
As you sit at home in isolation, do you have an effective way to overcome your fear?
The best part about this stay-at-home rule is that you get plenty of time to get reacquainted with yourself.
Understanding why and how you respond to situations of fear is extremely useful in building long-term self-confidence. This contributes to your peace and happiness, which will lead to further success.
Here are 3 tips for how to take control of your fear over the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic so it doesn't control you.
1. Move through your fears.
With daily reports of bad news, it’s not surprising that a lot of people are afraid.
Since a virus is invisible to the naked eye and there's no vaccine yet, COVID-19 became the dreaded invisible enemy.
To make matters worse, one of the only ways to defeat this enemy is by social distancing, which means snatching your support system from under you right when you could use it the most.
If you still have a job at this point, you might find yourself in the ultimate dilemma as a working mom, caught between your responsibilities and caring for or homeschooling your children, which no one is allowed to help with.
Or maybe you have a toothache that needs medical attention and you've been turned away by your dentist, doctor, or even the hospital. What happened to the healthcare benefits you paid for?
It's normal to feel overwhelmed, angry, and hopeless and want to point fingers and lash out.
But will these negative emotions help you? Not directly.
It’s well known that staying in fear, anger, and other negative emotions will weaken your immune system. Fear in short spurts, however, is Mother Nature’s signal for productive transformation.
2. Keep your mind occupied.
Being told to stay at home offers a perfect time for meditation, yoga, cleaning the house, baking, and starting projects that you bought supplies for years ago but never got around to.
Perhaps you run an "essential service" business and have to keep going regardless of everything going on. Keep yourself occupied.
Being neutral can be an admirable place to be. After all, why get caught up in stories if they don’t affect you personally and can’t do much about them?
Staying in the present is great if you are truly at peace inside… Truly, that is.
Keeping yourself occupied just to keep your mind from going into fear is healthy only for a short time.
When you begin to lose sleep, binge eat, or feel anxiety, then mindfulness is not enough ammunition for you. It’s much better to get to the bottom of your fear.
There is a reason for everything. There is a reason for fear. Fear is a good signal to pay attention to for your long-term betterment.
3. Use this time to grow.
Fear arises only when you feel you’ve been caught off-guard. So, learning how to be prepared can help. Being prepared begins with knowledge.
You’re definitely among the majority if you felt caught off-guard by COVID-19. This event has given everyone quite a lot of food for thought. But the more you know, the more you can be prepared.
Did you ever think that you would suddenly come face-to-face with empty shelves at the stores? Did you ever expect to be under a stay-at-home order? Did you expect to have to turn away your friends and family for fear of being fined?
You may have read about such scenarios in novels like "Brave New World" and "1984," but that was fiction... Or so you thought. Now it seems like it's happening.
If the virus is your biggest fear, then this would be a wakeup call for you to boost your immune system to tip-top shape. Whatever health vice you had wanted to change but had put off, there’s no better incentive than now.
Maybe finance and the future wellbeing of your family is your new worry. Could this be a wakeup call to review and reduce your expenses? How about setting priority to the online income potential you never had time to work on?
Along with physical and mental health improvements are emotional improvements paramount for a healthy immune system. Sitting at home with little distraction now, this could be your revealing moment.
Make mental notes for yourself such as: What bothers you about your life? Are you willing to change to give yourself a stronger chance to cruise through future crises?
Perhaps your fear has more to do with the community. Do you feel caught off-guard as a citizen in a free country? Maybe something from official media doesn’t make sense to you. Maybe you’ve heard contradicting information.
Chances are you’re not the only person to get this feeling. Connect with like-minded people online; join a conversation rather than anxiously wait it out alone.
United we conquer. Divided we fall.
In the meantime, let your fear take the lead as your direction of exploration. New knowledge is never wasted. It’s vital now more than ever that every individual rises to their inner directives.
Regardless of the outcome of this worldwide event, one thing is certain: Life will never be the same again.
Human beings are very resilient. Things will go back to normal. Although beneath it all, everyone will have learned something and be changed forever.
This is the beauty of nature. You can use your fear to get you through this trying time and prepare you to better handle things in the future.
Kei K. Lam (a.k.a. Kei Kay) is a best-selling author and founder of the Compassion-Activation healing technique. She works with determined, sensitive, introverted women to relieve them of doubt and confusion. You can find her through her website.