First, focus on personal immunity.

Physically and mentally, our personal immunity is at the core of this pandemic. It is the common vector that influences our overall susceptibility, our ability to recover, and the overall rate of spread. We fear for our personal immunity because it’s undefinable. This cycle depletes our physical and mental reserves, leaving us unable to navigate through information overload, much less plan for our future. Chronically ill, or abundantly healthy; none of us gets a free pass from COVID-19. That doesn’t mean we can’t do something about it as individuals. Now that we’ve accepted this incident will be prolonged, what can we do besides social distance and brace ourselves?

Each of our journeys are different, but a healthier you is a healthier whole. Ask yourself what personal immunity means to you, and don’t shy away from your weak points.

Personal immunity could mean a number of things:

• Optimizing the way you fuel and use your body.
• Finding more vitality through unlocked passion.
• Setting boundaries which allow you to thrive.

Optimizing the way you fuel and use your body begins with learning to listen to your body and even starting to think with it. Meditation can help with this connection. As you begin to feel more in touch with your body, you can select for behaviors that suit it. Our minds endlessly try to predict future patterns, but you’ll find that your body is the pattern from which you’ll operate. Best to get to know it, take care of it, and listen. As Bessel Van der Kolk MD says, “the body keeps the score”. Get proper rest, stay hydrated and take in a variety of foods & nutrients. Get sunlight every day. Use your body as a vehicle to renew your own energy and spark creative thought. Stretch, move, resistance train, do what feels right! Build routines into the full utilization of your muscles and breath — more predictable health and adaptability will follow. Learning to incorporate, “embodied cognition” is a fine toolset to have in uncertain times. Operating from sound, strong bodies allows us to do more than we’ve ever thought possible — like extinguishing fear by altering breath and vision.

“Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything.”—Thich Nhat Hanh

Finding Vitality Through Passion: Fall asleep knowing you’re resting to take up the effort tomorrow. Wake up with something to work towards. Rediscover a passion or learn a skill. Picking up the guitar, a dumbbell, or set of work gloves are all worthy pursuits. This is not just about bringing a, “nice new hobby” into the post-C19 world. This is about how you show up in the world for yourself and your family for the next decade. Sometimes a lack of vitality shows up when we get off the path of our dreams. Rediscovering what truly drives you and giving yourself the time to focus on it could reveal a forgotten fire in your creative core. Give yourself permission to light it.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”—Howard Thurman

Setting Healthy Boundaries For Yourself/Protecting Your Potential To Thrive. We’ve all got a general sense that our wellbeing is intrinsically tied to our energy levels, and for many right now it is a delicate balance. Work can either stress you out or motivate you. Relationships either feed you or drain you. Take an honest look at how you are giving and receiving energy. Maybe you need to work less hours in the week. Maybe you just need some space to reset. Maybe you need to set a boundary from substances or food, your mobile phone or the television. It could be as simple as following an earlier bedtime or a later morning alarm clock. Protecting your physical and mental energy is of utmost importance right now, so remember this as you plan your days ahead. If you feel trapped, reach out for help; or for conversation—sometimes it’s about breaking past false boundaries we place ourselves in. We can also certainly use this time to forge positive relationships with those we’d like to work, live or play with in the future.

“Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept.”– Anna Taylor

Whatever the statistics are, the better care you take of yourself, the less chances you’ll have to get sick, infect others, or take energy from the system. The better you feel, the more energy you’ll have to give to others; who themselves may lift up their networks. Feeling healthy, present, and centered will also prepare you to properly plan your future, participate in conversations about what to do next as a community, and adapt to whatever happens.

Whether you fight the virus this time around or take a vaccine in the future, best start preparing now, no matter your age, health or starting point. We have a chance to emerge into a feeling of empowerment and gain the ability to see relative improvement from wherever we currently are.

Generally, get to a place where you truly feel healthy, and upon arriving, do your best to ensure those in your network do too.

Next, practice being good to others.

To protect a future we can all hope for, the above instruction must become a learned trait, not a temporary crisis response. No matter the statistical extent of the economic or health crisis, this pandemic will leave many humans in vulnerable positions. Vulnerable populations lead to instability, so it’s vital that we truly step up into becoming ethical moral beings and bring everyone along with us. Building basic practices of supporting each other, being kind to the vulnerable and integrating into our lives is more important than ever.

As we watch an infectious disease course past fractured global supply chains, we can’t help but realize how connected we are. This realization makes it clear that our support must extend beyond ourselves, and we need to think about how best to distribute resources. I’ve seen articles talk about shaming folks doing the wrong thing right now, but it’s 10x more important to applaud and spread word of those doing good. The lesson we’re learning now will apply to any conceivable future.

Ask yourself what being good to others means to you. What ways can you nourish a collective perspective? If giving back becomes a learned trait, we all stand to receive more support the next time we need it.

Being good to others could mean a number of things:

• Supporting the basic needs of those around you.
• Identifying & amplifying other positive inputs.
• Sharing your gifts with the world.

Supporting each other in community: Building a core competency of taking care of each other’s basic needs will help keep us all afloat. There’s something beautiful about washing your hands, putting on some gloves and dropping off a sealed jar of mixed nuts at a neighbors doorstep. You could order a gift to be delivered to your sister, brother or friend from college. Join thousands of folks across the country are sewing masks for frontline workers, or find a great place to donate! Let’s hold onto these behaviors and continue to apply our energies into the frameworks of collective support that emerge. Check on your neighbors, make sure they have thermometers, fresh food, and social connection! Phone a friend, write a letter (Support the USPS by buying some stamps ahead of time this year!) or buy a giftcard to a loved restaurant in the hopes they can open back up soon.

“On this earth that gives us care, the profit we make is made to share. For those who have a rough, hard start—give us a chance to do our part. If we give them hope, joy and love, we’ll receive praise from God above..” — 11 year old me. (full poem below)

Identifying and amplifying positive forces: This is our chance to define what the future looks like. Now more than ever, we must applaud those facing down bleak realities with optimism and grit. Let’s look at the adaptive private-sector folks who’ve shifted gears to help, seek to identify which parts of governments and health organizations we’d like to see exemplified in the future. There’s much to be said about the organic community support like Intellihelp, or stories of NextDoor neighbors supporting each other, not to mention the delivery services, grocery stores, and essential workers that have hoisted us upon their shoulders through this time. Donations are piling up across the entertainment, beauty, and service industries, and it seems we are collectively organizing to support the most vulnerable. This isn’t to say that we’re doing enough, it’s simply to illustrate the good being done, and offer the call to action to do more of it. Even as we see the light at the end of the tunnel for returning to a semi-normal life, we must still focus on the best parts of us that showed up — from individuals to our global society.

“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”– Martin Luther King Jr.

Showing Up: On Sharing Your Gifts with the World: This time truly asks of us to step up onto our fullest potentials so that we might usher in an age of abundance. Our basic needs covered due to our expanded altruistic learned traits. Our individual selves having stepped up into a more confident place, able to offer our gifts of sense-making, organization, courage, creativity or art. As we go through a difficult time of fear, loss and grieving, we could build atop a new culture on the other side. A culture based around showing up as our highest selves and making it our imperative to ensure everyone has a chance to follow that path. We’ll have learned information discernment and what it means to have a healthy relationship with technology & news sources. We’ll have seen the ripple effects of positive leadership and community organizing. We’ll have seen many an individual hone and refine their personal gifts as they show up for themselves and each other. And it’s ok if you’re still finding your gift, use this time to reflect on what that may be. Feel free to look around for inspiration, but know you’ll eventually have to look inside.

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”– Pablo Picasso

Why this matters so much, now.

We are in a liminal space. A place where time feels compressed as kinetics are paused and potential reigns in free chaos. The world froze over for a few weeks, but the ice is melting.

The types of organizing that arise out of the chaos will define our next age. It could be better, or it could be worse. It’s certainly not about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about who is willing and able to act, hopefully in a manner that benefits the most people. I’m optimistic of the general sense of cohesive reactiveness demonstrated across state and party lines in the face of a global survival threatening event. Let’s make sure this cohesiveness doesn’t take so long to bind next time. Let’s find our way to a clarity of vision for our collective wellbeing, safety and freedoms.

We’ll have difficult conversations ahead of us, but perhaps we’ll remember them as growing pains on the path to a new way of life. Whatever the net result of this, “coronation”, is, we must each do our best to remain educated and connected. The experts and authorities are hard at work fixing and guiding, but it’s clear it will take more than simply support from above to render our future desirable for all. We all have a say in how our future is built, both personally and as members of the human race.

Are we stewards of our own energy in such a way as to support ourselves towards our dreams and the health of those around us? Have enough of us woken up to the concept of, “All of us or none of us?” In defining our future, it’s helpful to realize the global context. We win as a team and the game is won & celebrated, or we forget and the game goes on.

Ultimately, the call is a practice of self-love, aimed towards the ability to outwardly project this love to others. No matter where we are on the spectrum, we’re all intrinsically tied to each other. Choose growth for yourself, and for all.

If we take what’s best in us and bring it forward, we have a chance to define a very bright future for us and the generations ahead. Humanity still has some big problems to solve, and this experience will either drain us or train us. If you’re tired, rest; but if you’re awake, keep training.