It would be safe to say that in the last few weeks my brain has gone crazy. I could never have predicted that when I resigned in November, would I leave the office, retrain, be full of energy and ready to go, then one week later see WHO announce a pandemic.
Welcome to the world of trying to make it as a PT in the middle of Covid-19.
My brain has well and truly done loops of the stages of acceptance. Although I think I compressed it into three stages: denial, depression and acceptance. Some of those stages I even went through within the space of four minutes.
Let’s take Tuesday morning, for example.
Last week I realised I was going to have to do something quickly to try and get some more stable work, a couple of days a week. As the probability of getting work in a gym was quickly reducing. So I spoke to a recruiter and lined up an interview for Tuesday. On Monday evening I decided I email in the morning to see if we could change to Skype.
Before I could get out of bed, I had a voicemail to say the interview was cancelled, I tried to get it rearranged to Skype instead of a complete cancellation. “No, sorry”. Fair enough – these are unpredictable times and who knows how the next steps would pan out.
My brain immediately fell into depression: “What is the point in getting up today? I’m just going back to sleep, I’ll deal with life later”. NO.
Within three minutes, I’d seen an advert on Instagram for free training with Opex to get better at programming workouts. YES.
I immediately signed up and read day one of the four day course. I looked for business courses to learn about how to market myself. By the end of the day, I had signed up for six courses I have been looking at for a while but not had the time.
By the afternoon, I’d written content to launch a free seven-day nutrition group on Facebook. This is a key time to get people thinking about how to get healthy while they have the time. Give people a positive to focus on, instead of a negative. Focus on what they can control, instead of what they can’t. Everyone is worried about money and the state of their future, so I’m happy not to charge, build up my experience, and get to know more about how people think.
The key thing: I’m doing something, I’m keeping my brain busy, I’m working with people, I’m not falling into a rut of sleeping all day and doing nothing.
There are two ways we can look at Covid-19:
The world is over, what is the point!
I have a lot of time on my hands now and I can use that wisely, to my advantage, what can I make of this opportunity.
If you are struggling with the uncertainty of what is going on right now: stop. Take a breath, refocus, think of one thing at a time (a minute, an hour, a day). What positive can you take from this experience? How can you redefine this for you?
Silence the things that make you feel anxious, whether that is turning off social media, limiting the people you speak to, or rationing the time you spend watching the news. Stay indoors where you can. Keep active and healthy as much as possible.
If you need someone to talk to – give me a shout, join my nutrition challenge and make a positive change.
You’ve got this. We’re all in it together.
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