Life on hold

With Germany and Luxembourg, the countries I and my family are living in, partially shutting down in the past 24 hours, I started realizing the situation around the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is also changing my life considerably at the moment.

All the projects I’ve been professionally working on in the past six to eight months got canceled. I won’t be able to see the result of my hard work.

All the conferences I planned to attend got canceled.

All personal travel plans and projects, including some I specifically made to cope better with the actual situation, like a mental coaching trip to Sahara, got canceled.

I don’t know when I’m going to see my family again, as the borders between the two countries got closed.

It IS hard!

While I totally understand why all these measures are necessary and inevitable, I’m not ashamed to admit that I'm having a very hard time to deal with the consequences it has on my life and my personal freedom.

As an extrovert, I am longing for in-person social contact after only a few days of isolation.

As a person struggling with mental health issues, I feel the urgent need to constantly make plans and to always have projects and events to look forward to.

And a part of me still wants to have the feeling that I am in full control of my life, despite being fully aware that it’s mostly a giant and bad illusion.

Of course, I  do realize that a lot of people are experiencing worse situations at the moment, but that doesn’t ease my personal pain right now.

Also, I am convinced that there are many people out there feeling the same way I do and that’s why I wanted to share my thoughts.

I’m not alone! YOU are not alone!

Mental Health

In the past few days, I have been super worried about my own and my friends’ and family’s state of mental health.

Despite the obvious and rightfully priority concerns about physical health, survival, and economy, I was wondering what will be left of us in terms of mental health, when the imminent danger of the pandemic disease is going to be “under control” in some weeks, months or years?

Needless to say that all these thoughts are triggering anxiety.

#ThreePositiveThings

I made a decision today.

I will more actively focus on the positive things that happen to me every single day and share those with you.

I am not in full control of my life anymore and hey, let’s be honest, I never was. Do I like this thought? No. But it’s not like I had a choice, right?

In the past few years, I’ve been working hard in order to improve and maintain my physical and mental health. I have so many tools and resources. It’s about time to remember and to use them wisely.

This is the exact right time to become more present in your lives, to practice mindfulness and gratefulness, to focus on the positive things that are happening around you. The more you become aware, the more they will happen to you, I promise.

I decided to create a daily blog and Twitter post series where I am going to share at least three positive things that happen to me in my daily life. I want to help spread some positive vibes and I'd love to hear from your day and your personal experience too!

Reach Out For Help

I am not alone! You are not alone!

Reach out if you feel alone, sad, desperate. While social distancing is imperative at the moment, we can still call or text each other. There are emails, there are online meetings, there are social media. And check on your beloved ones occasionally, to make sure they feel ok, too.

To all my folks in WordPress and in tech in general, my friends from WP&UP have incredibly valuable resources to help you in the current situation, be it questions about remote work, mental health support, advice on your business development or simply chatting with like-minded people. Check out their advice for the current situation: https://wpandup.org/go/covid-19-and-the-new-remote-work-community/

The Right Mindset

Before wrapping up, I wanted to share what happened to my way of thinking after I had the idea for this post series. Obviously, I  started thinking about what I wanted to share with you today. 

The more I actively searched for positive experiences to share, the more I found. But that's not even the best part: with this positive mindset, more positive things also happened to me! 

I am full of positive energy right now and I had such a hard time picking only three things, that I am going to share four with you today.

I’m trying to keep it shorter in the upcoming days, also knowing that there will be days where it’s going to be harder to find the positive things - and vibes. But that’s ok too. For now, I’m happy to be who I am and where I am, and that’s all I got at this exact moment!

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March 17th, 2020 #ThreePositiveThings (+1)

#1 - E-Bike

I reactivated my e-bike for a short 15km ride back and forth to my physiotherapist. It felt absolutely great to be on the bike again, in the best weather you can imagine for the middle of March in the German Eifel.

#2 - New meat source

At my physiotherapist, I found out about a person from the neighboring village who is selling fresh wild boar and venison meat from our local forests.
Since my husband and I have been living on a ketogenic diet since October, we are eating more meat again. As this diet has the purpose to improve our physical health, I want to make sure the food we are eating is of the best quality. Additionally, I feel the urgent need not to support animal suffering in any way and that’s why I am constantly looking out for opportunities to find meat from animals with the best possible husbandry conditions, preferably local or regional origin. I am very grateful to have found this source of meat now and we ended up buying wild boar sausages and venison porterhouse-steaks.

#3 - Keto Pad Thai

I made the very best ketogenic Pad Thai for lunch! We fell completely in love with this dish during our marvelous stay in Thailand last month. Check out the recipe!
I replaced the blackstrap molasses with tamarind-paste. If you want to prepare a regular non-keto version, replace the Shirataki (Konjak) noodles with rice noodles and the coconut aminos with soy sauce! Bon Appétit!

#4 - Online Yoga Class>

A friend of mine from Luxembourg is teaching yoga classes for quite some time now. I always wanted to participate but the route distance seemed too long only to participate in yoga class. Today I found out she switched to yoga online-sessions as the regular yoga classes are not allowed to happen anymore. I obviously love the idea first of all because, in these times, it’s more important than ever to exercise this kind of activity and second, because now I will be able to finally join a yoga class with my friend!

And this is what I’m going to do right now, so stay safe and see you tomorrow!