4 THINGS TO DO POST COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

4 Things to do post COVID-19 Lockdown 2020

Reset your mindset

This word needs no introduction. For those who still need one, mindset is how you see the world. Remember the half-empty/half-full glass story? Exactly. Be very careful of what you allow inside your mind. This includes any piece of news, emotion, notion, even your thoughts and approach towards life. 

Your mind is a garden and you need to nourish and engage with it in ways that will allow you to jab with the new world as it opens its stage. If you are a person who thinks that “I am who I am and this is how I have been all my life. Take it or leave it” where do you think it will take you? It’s a straight road to complacency. If you believe either “you are only born with it or you can learn it” in both cases you are right.

Develop a flexible mindset. Be prepared to believe in the process. Always remember WHY & WHAT are always greater than HOW. Say you are a chartered accountant by profession and the new market makes you redundant or less marketable, will you be the one to hang up your boots and cry foul? Or will you be open to trying newer professions, skills that will help you sustain and survive?

Make no mistake, we are moving from a job economy to a skilled economy. Only the fittest, toughest and most adaptable will survive. Welcome to guerrilla warfare! Don’t get disheartened yet. While this could sound difficult to ace, it is not. As Captain Planet from the good old Cartoon Network says, “the power is yours”. How? Garbage in, garbage out. Simple. You can only develop a flexible mindset if you gate-check your emotions, people’s emotions around you.

For example, recently, our PM announced the 21 days lockdown. Just minutes after he made this broadcast, people experienced an array of emotions – anxiety, fear, surprise & despair, to the name of a few. It led the citizens to run helter-skelter for resources all over the country. By doing this, not only they defeated the whole purpose of the lockdown (no gathering of people in clusters), but, also aggravated, exposed themselves and fellow citizens to our darkest enemy so far in history, COVID-19.

A movie called 2012 had released in 2009 that was filmed on the prediction that the world will soon end. This thought is called “groupthink”. A renowned politician calls it “cattle class mentality”. A phenomenon where people blindly follow the notion of the group to conform with it, lest face eviction. 

Some gave up their jobs/education. Why study or work anyway when we know the result! How convenient! If you do some research, you will be surprised that there are people who posted questions on public forums, like “should we kill ourselves, our children?” Imagine, instead of these self-inflicted thoughts, if people asked, “can we build Noah’s boat?” “can we not panic and see this through together?” Do you get my drift?.

Upgrade your mindset for a prepared tomorrow. In simple math, mindset = thoughts + beliefs + emotions + personal traits x circumstances. {Ms = (T + B + E + Pt)x C} © #PritsZav. In case you do not know how to capture your traits, values, don’t worry. Coaching Techniques in 1:1s for Leaders has a section that refers to this subject, you can apply these to yourselves.

Reassign your Heart

“I love you with all my heart”. “My heart fluttered when I heard this”. Say hello to one of the most overused yet underestimated words known to us. The function of the heart is to pump blood to our vessels, the circulatory system. It helps us receive much-needed oxygen. What happens when this supply is blocked? Myocardial infarction. Better or worst known as a heart attack.

These are tangible functions/dysfunctions. But what if I told you that just like pumping blood throughout the body, the heart also serves as the HQ to a fair judicial system. It pumps decisions, close calls, emotions into our body. What do I mean? The heart always tells you what is right and what is not despite the protests from your brain.

I’m sure you have felt conflicted. As you prepare to step out of this lockdown, I want you to take a good look at your mental faculty, which make up your internal judiciary. Reassign duties. Align them with the new world realities.

Make sure you are more generous towards others. Give to people who don’t have or have lost everything during these times. Do what you can. True happiness is when you give back to society. Being happy contributes to good health. It’s all connected. Be compassionate towards others. Remember the notion of #WeAreAllinThisTogether? Be prepared to lend a helping hand.

Compassion is vital and the foundation to success in corporate life too. Leaders are those who take the first bullet for their teams. Invest time to find out the post-pandemic human behaviour. Make sure you align your emotional faculties with the need of the hour. Provide mentoring, coaching, counselling for your peers, friends if you are good at it.

Restore your spirit

“He has a great team spirit” “She lives in the U.S but in spirit, she lives in India” I am talking about both of these references to the spirit. The first one is how we feel. The latter is about spirit separate from the body. So far we spoke about emotions, traits, behaviours. Let’s say all these work in your favour during this season, but somehow you have a “bad feeling about it” what will you do? It is very important to make sure you steer your feelings. If you implement the concept of a flexible mindset discussed above, you will learn how to feel right. How to manipulate your feelings to benefit from it.

Mind you, I’m not asking you to step on someone’s feelings to benefit from it. No, that would be evil. I’m asking you to quarantine your feelings for 30 minutes each day. Self isolates it. Use this time to restore your spirit in this world. You might ask, isn’t it prudent to share our feelings with others during such horrid times? 

Do it with all your heart. Social distancing doesn’t have to be emotional distancing too! I would ask you to open your contacts and reach out to those friends and family whom you have not spoken to, for ages. Use this time to mend relationships – with God, this world and citizens of Jotunheim.

Don’t wait for them to call you or reach out. However, when you make feelings strategy, adjust them and realign them, do it alone. This requires undivided attention and solitude. Remember that Spirit = 10x feelings. To be best equipped for tomorrow, learn to pick up the right frequencies from your emotions. 

Think of fine-tuning a radio till you get the song seamlessly. Before you say, easier said than done, let me introduce to you the concept of EI – Emotional Intelligence. Simply put, intelligence on emotions so that you make informed decisions to be successful. For example, if you tune in to emotions like “depression, despair and fear, how will it make you feel? Will this eventually break your spirit or not? And with a broken spirit, how far will you go in the post-pandemic world? Get the clarity? This is one part of the spirit which is about your feelings. The one that you can manage. The other and most critical part is your actual spirit that resides in your body temporarily. This is managed only by God almighty.

So Prits why are you sharing the Holy Spirit concept when you have already discussed ways to survive the post-pandemic world order? My message to you is, when all your tactics fail, even though you did your best, or couldn’t; remember the Holy Spirit. It resides inside of every one of you. It never fails. Look at the macro of things. The third-person view. 

Don’t despair, fret and question everything beyond your pay grade. These are the times when you must prepare to know the truth. The truth shall set you free. Then go out with an open mind and get that new job, skill, relationship. It belongs to you. Nor Pandemic or its great grandfather can stop you.

Restore your body

Have you seen any of the fast and the furious movies? I enjoyed them. Especially when the protagonist, Vin Diesel uses nitro boosts to get that much-needed win and yes, adrenaline rush. What has this to do with the body? Be right back. Since the Holy Spirit lives in us, our bodies are nothing but temples that we must revere. A lot of us don’t.

Thanks to fast food chains, smoking, drinking and thousand of other vices. What do most successful CEOs of giant companies have in common? They take care of their bodies. They respect their bodies. Work out! They make time for physical activity. Strong is the new fit. Without being too harsh, I want to highlight how previous generations had nullified health as a key ingredient to success.

Barring a small percentage in this world, most took health as a waste of time, as a luxury of the elite. In the new tomorrow, you will need to be on your toes, run for opportunities, master your reflexes to gain that win. In short, you will need that nitro boost to get to the finish line, and faster. Mind you, I’m not asking you to prepare for a rat race. Far from it.

Prepare to compete with yourself. Outdo your yesterday. Be better than yesterday. Use your body to provide you with that adrenaline rush like the movies. That will only be possible if you set out 30-60 minutes each day to resort to some activity. This will allow you to employ your mind, heart, spirit better. For these four to execute their job roles, provide them with a great platform and working environment in a strong body. This will also build on your immune system to fight trojan horses like COVID-19, in the future.