Last month I wrote I was enjoying re-reading old posts from 2020. I have continued to be impressed by the mindset I see in my words that first year of the Pandemic. I remember I was clear that I wanted to “make my own weather” and make the best of the situation. I’m inspired even today by the clarity and resilience I read in posts from that year.
Here are some highlights from April 2020, when the new Pandemic lifestyle was just getting underway.
1. “An Infinite Supply of Well-Being,” April 1, 2020
In the time between this post and my last post of several months before, the world had changed more than I had ever seen. Suddenly we were all sheltered-in-place and on lockdown. I wrote:
Maybe these circumstances are the perfect opportunity to let go of our insane need to think that we control anything at all outside of ourselves and instead focus on the amazing power we have to focus on things that brings us peace, joy, and satisfaction.
Maybe the most sane choice we can make, in this moment of where everything seems uncertain, is to believe that all is well despite how conditions appear.
2. “My Conversation with Chicken Little,” April 5, 2020
That March, I had plenty of conversations with a part of my brain I learned to call Chicken Little. It’s the part that freaks out when everything seems uncertain. He was always saying the sky is falling! Of course, that was easy to think at the time. Things had hardly been more uncertain in the modern world. Yet I wrote:
How does being pessimistic help?
How does being convinced that the worst is about to happen help? It hasn’t happened!
How is a past-based, fear-based emotional reflex the correct response? How do you know it is?
3. “Guard Your Mind,” April 11, 2020
In the previous few weeks, my wife and I (and much of the rest of the world) transitioned to working completely online. We were still getting used to the “new normal” of the stay-at-home lifestyle. Uncertainty was rampant.
However, I was already quite clear on where I stood. As I wrote that day,
Because you do have a choice: you can go along with the herd, which is scared as it gobbles up horrific news stories and meditates on the worst form of nightmares real and imagined. You can let Chicken Little become the President and CEO of You Inc., steering your ship and making all your decisions for you.
Go ahead and do it. It’s still a free country. But don’t expect to be happy. Happiness does not come from wallowing in worry. Believe me, I know of which I speak.
Guard Your Mind
4. “The Power of Your Thoughts,” April 17, 2020
I’m not sure I had ever been so clear on the need to keep a positive mental attitude as I did in the early days of the Pandemic. Making this choice continues to serve me. I wrote:
I don’t think there is (yet) widespread recognition of the power of our thoughts. Yet every single person is living proof of the power of thoughts, because their life experience correlates exactly on some level with those thoughts.
The Power of Your Thoughts