Post #85 Manage your Life During COVID-19
Most of us are living in unprecedented times in the U.S. as campuses shut down to avoid COVID-19. Students find themselves scrambling to make major, unplanned adjustments. How do you manage your life during COVID-19? I offer three simple and basic ways you can help yourself.
Number One – Drop the Drama
As engineering students, you appreciate facts, numbers and data. Let’s remember this as you are reading or watching your new sources. To take it one step further: remember the media has a job to perform. Do you know what this job involves? The news media has a goal of keeping its viewers. The media will do what it needs to do in order to keep you coming back for more. Don’t misunderstand – I am not criticizing or bashing the media. I do believe there are some facts you can find in every story. The trick is to remember to find the facts and leave the dramatic narrative behind. The media will use words, pictures and videos to their advantage. Step one to help yourself manage your life during COVID-19 is to ignore the dramatic media and pay attention to the facts.
Number Two – Stick to Facts
Speaking of facts, let’s discuss some statistics I’ve obtained online as of today. Since I live in Indiana, I will start with our state. As of today, 30,869 people in Indiana have been tested for the virus according to https://coronavirus.in.gov/.
As of today, 19.25% of those people have tested positive. Of those that tested positive, 3.42% have passed. Per CNN’s website, https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/, there are a total of 401,166 positive cases in the U.S. Of those that tested positive, 3.25% have passed. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that both statewide and nationwide, the death rate hovers around 3.3%. Whether this is good or bad is up to you to decide. These are some facts as reported with no narrative, no drama and no sensationalism.
Number Three – Don’t do This
For the sake of everyone around you including yourself do not PANIC. Do not cause unnecessary worry or stress to those around you. Heaven forbid you or a loved one should catch the virus, let’s hope this doesn’t happen. But you must be prepared to ask yourself, “what if it does?” How would you manage your life during COVID-19? What you do is treat yourself (or your loved one) with care, compassion and patience. Self-care is the best gift you can give yourself, whether infected or not (pay attention to Post #57). Please do not make the situation worse by feeding dramatic, unreasonable thoughts into your head. For anyone infected, practice constant self-care and strategically think helpful thoughts on purpose.
For additional tools and brain exercises to help you manage your COVID-19 circumstances, visit my YouTube video: Managing Student Life During COVID-19
