If you’ve seen the news channels lately, you’ve most certainly heard about the new coronavirus, a new strain of virus that’s sweeping across China and spreading to other parts of the world.
If you’re feeling nervous about the coronavirus outbreak, rest assured you’re not alone.
When something is new, unknown and potentially dangerous you can expect anxiety levels to spike on a global level. Especially when mainstream media and social media jumps all over it – often with conflicting reports on different channels.
While professionals across the planet work towards creating pharmaceutical ‘cures’, there are some simple, practical ways for you to deal with the anxiety feelings and reduce risk of contraction of the virus.
Keep it in perspective
The first constructive thing to do is to keep the risk of catching the virus in perspective. We do many things each day that incur low risk, but the benefit or reward outweighs the risk and so is necessary.
Cooking, driving, swimming, flying, even crossing a road… all incur risk, with deaths occuring within each of these categories. But what we do is to keep the risk in perspective while we manage our necessary activities.
Let’s apply that mindset to the coronavirus.
If you’re eating healthily (to strengthen your own natural immune response), wearing a P2 or N95 when visiting crowded places; Keeping your digits clean and bug free with hand sanitiser and covering your own mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing (let’s hope that others do the same)… You’re proactively taking reasonable, common-sense steps to dramatically reduce the risk of catching the virus in the first place. This should serve to reduce your anxiety levels because you’re taking positive action against the perceived threat.
Add to this some regular exercise, whenever you can, to increase your level of physical health. Exercise creates a positive physiological response which is known to reduce psychological anxiety.
Start to maintain your focus on what actions you can control, and on which risks you can reduce, rather than focusing on all the sensationalised advert-peddling headlines of the mainstream media, which uses fear to gain readership and sell products.
Anxiety lives in your mind, so using some positive self-talk and mindset techniques to relax and maintain motivation is a great way to reduce the nerves caused by uncertainty. Feel free to use any of the FREE downloads from my site here or on my Insight Timer page here.
A calmer mind creates a healthier physical body, and vice versa. Take steps to work on both of these factors, while taking practical steps to reduce the contraction of the virus and let’s stay positively healthy together.