3 Ways to Get In Touch With Yourself in the Pandemic
Something we have known since the start of the pandemic is, we are our own enemy. This isn’t just true about the virus - not knowing who has it, who is safe, who you can trust, etc. - but about our own inner thoughts and tendencies as well. A full year later and we know that it is so easy to lose ourselves and feel like we’ve lost our energy, power, sense of control, and sanity with everything going on in our inner and outer worlds. And in times of fluctuating uncertainty, we need to become conscious of how and where we are using our energy. Here are 3 ways we can best learn to get in touch with ourselves, own our power, and thrive amid our circumstances:
Think like a scientist
Every day we have thoughts coming and going. To think like a scientist is to question thinking. Take time to explore what is going on, how it is manifesting in your body, your thoughts, and emotions. This is known as parsing our behavior.
TIP: Self-help therapy cards, My Soul Brief-Case, are an excellent tool that can help guide you through the parsing process and think like a scientist. The green cards in particular can help you get started.
Re-imagine your outcomes
In therapy, when a client presents their current reality, struggle, challenge, or situation, I sometimes like to ask them what they would want instead. I try to get them to imagine an alternate state and to describe what they would see, hear, feel, and do in that scenario. These are called “miracle” questions in solution-focused brief therapy, because they help you imagine what else might be possible. So after parsing through step 1, ask yourself, what other ways can you explore your situation?
TIP: Did you know that the yellow cards in My Soul Brief-Case can help you do this?
Re-align with action
Our last step is about defining what you really want. Now that you’ve explored your current situation, other possibilities and outcomes, and have re-imagined, the last step is about aligning yourself with action. How can you narrow down your options to create a plan that will support your re-imagined vision?
To get in touch with ourselves in this pandemic, we need to be able to meet ourselves where we are and think like scientists - gather our hypotheses, test our actions, iterate our plans. We will only ever known when something is truly right when we try and execute. Living in our heads will not launch us into action. It takes a certain kind of willingness to be truthful, compassionate, and open with ourselves to re-imagine and re-align. And that’s how we truly step into our power.