Is it business as usual for you right now? I would think not.
A little virus is holding us, the whole world, hostage, and everything has turned upside down. I do not know about you, but I have felt more uncertainty then in a long time before. It is stressful!
I want to address that uncertainty, what is uncertain and what is actually as it always has been?
The Corona virus is new to us humans. That means we didn’t know initially how it was going to affect us. Now 4 months later we still don’t have all the answers but we have a clue on what to expect.
What I see as a doctor is that the uncertainty that we have is just as hard to tackle as the virus. Our brain wants to have certainty, otherwise it makes up stories, some good and some far from the truth. We also always make decisions from emotions, not by logic and then we find a reason to back up on our choice. This all leads to a lot of believing and not so much facts. It makes it a must to check the facts you can check. And that leads us to the question of what to do to tackle this new situation. What habits do we need to change?
What habits do we be extra aware of in this time of being locked up in in the Corona Quarantine?
I’d say the routines around your energy generating system – sleep, eat and exercise. They are the habits that can make you cope in the long run.
You stay home, maybe just do shorter rounds for shopping. You work from home, which means you move around less than usual. Maybe you are not allowed to go to the gym. You become a coach potato.
You eat just as much as usual even though you don’t move as much. And you treat yourself with things with sugar and fat in it – because that is what our ancient brain wants. “Poor me, I just need a little bit more of that delicious treat” – it says.
And since you just sit all day long and you eat too much your sleep is affected. You sit and watch TV until late and you have a hard time falling asleep when you finally hit bed. And then you wake up at 3am and feel the anxiety creeping in your head and all your problems grow big. When you finally fall asleep you sleep longer in the morning and your next day is wrecked.
Taking care of those 3 habits is the best stress reducing action you can take to stay sound and healthy in this lockdown time. A healthy body and a healthy brain is a unit. It all affects each other.
What the brain and body want is regularity. That system was made 200,000 years ago, and we are still stuck with the same physical and mental systems.
- Regular sleep – 7-8 hours per night, every night and same time every night. Because the brain does not know what we call the different days. The brain needs the same every night.
- Regular food – 3 main meals a day at regular hours – same all days. Good healthy food with nutrients and vitamins. Beware of the portion size too.
- Regular exercise – 30 minutes brisk walk daily as a base. If you cannot get that in this lockdown you can work out other ways to get it, right? Maybe you have stairs at home. Use them, walk up and down for 30 minutes or do an exercise video online – be creative.
Getting these 3 areas right will make you feel more energized and you will be less prone to be depressed.
Making this work good for you now in the lockdown is good news for your health and then keeping these new good habits when we are free again will make you the long term winner you deserve to be.
Remember: we get what we focus on so it better be something positive to make your life good.
If you want more information on why you should concentrate on these three basic things and why it’s important, get my free pdf download by clicking here
To your success and keep smiling
