How to Get Your Life Back Amid Coronavirus [Episode #512]

This week’s topic is: How to Get Your Life Back Amid Coronavirus

None of us expected this to go on this long and into the foreseeable future it is quite one thing if this was going on for a couple of weeks or even a month or two.

However, because it continues to go on for months and months, we don’t want to feel like our whole life is on hold. That we’re not moving forward or we’re just in a stagnant place, which of course doesn’t feel good to any of us.

Today we’re going to talk about some practices and tips for really tapping in and feeling how life can still feel expansive and beautiful, even amidst this virus.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Natalie – Everett, Washington

I try not to watch the news too much, however, we’re clearly living in crazy times. How can I get my life back and not feel so unsure about our future?

Leah – Green River, Utah

It’s one thing to stay positive within myself but quite another when it comes to helping my teenage daughter be positive. Do you have any practices I can share that would help to navigate these uncertain times?

Aubrey – Tampa, Florida

I find your four cornerstones very interesting and wonder how you would rate these with importance when it comes to our mindset and dealing with COVID.

Denise – Portsmouth, Rhode Island

Life moves forward despite COVID. How can we feel like we have our life back, even though we’re clearly still in the midst of this virus? Being a wife and a mother, I feel like I need to lead by example, however, I’m not feeling very example-like.

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Inspirational Thought of the Week

“The secret to finding the deeper level in the other is finding the deeper level in yourself. Without finding it in yourself, you cannot see it in the other.” – Eckhart Tolle

[RESOURCES]

• SBO Probiotics
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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• Facing Fear and Getting Your Life Back
• Why Being Present Matters
• Essential Oils for Clearing Space and Promoting Love with Charlynn Avery
• The Amazing Power of Affirmations!

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly (00:01): Hey, Beauties, welcome back to our Thursday Q&A podcast. Our topic today is, How to Get Your Life Back Amid Coronavirus. This is a big one because of course, none of us expected this to go on this long and into the foreseeable future it is quite one thing if this was going on for a couple of weeks or even a month or two, but because it continues to go on for months and months and months, we don’t want to feel like our whole life is on hold, that we’re not moving forward, that we’re just in a stagnant place, which of course doesn’t feel good to any of us. So, today we’re going to talk about some practices and tips for really just tapping in and feeling how life can still feel expansive and beautiful, even amidst this virus.

Leave a Review and Subscribe on Itunes

Kimberly (00:57): So, before we get into it, I just want to make sure that I remind you to please leave us a review on iTunes, which is a great way to support the show. It keeps us going, it keeps us growing so we can keep providing the show for you. So thank you so much, it really is a wonderful way to help spread the love and to help other Beauties like yourself to find the show. And you can also please subscribe to the show because we’re all super ultra busy, and this is a way to just keep that flow in your life, and positivity and different tools for your practices and your growth and your self-care. So, yeah, so those are the ways that I so appreciate you helping to support.

Kimberly (01:49): So, let’s get right into our questions today. I’ve been doing the show solo for the past few weeks. Katelyn is an insane worker, she’s so amazing, she’s so busy right now. There’s so much going on with Solluna, so yeah, I’ll get her back on at some point, but for now it’s me and me alone.

Question 1: I try not to watch the news too much, however, we’re clearly living in crazy times. How can I get my life back and not feel so unsure about our future?

Kimberly (02:10): First question comes from Natalie in Everett Washington, and she writes, “I try not to watch the news too much, however, we’re clearly living in crazy times. How can I get my life back and not feel so unsure about our future?” So this is a really great question, Natalie. I understand that feeling of not feeling sure about what’s going on in the future and creating a lot of anxiety can be created around that. So the answer to this question, I will say, well, first of all, I’m going to acknowledge yes, there is a lot of unpredictability right now. There’s a lot of unrest, there’s just like a lot that’s coming up that needs to come to the surface for healing, I think in a lot of different ways.

Kimberly (03:02): But yeah, it’s hectic out there, shall we say? There’s a chaotic energy in the air. So one thing I’ll say, the teaching that applies to this is very Buddhist, actually. Buddha talked about fear at length, he talked about the causes of suffering. And one of the causes of suffering we know is an attachment to the future. It’s an attachment to future outcomes, wanting things to look a certain way, to be a certain way. And the truth is that-

Kimberly: 00:01 The reality is that we aren’t sure of the future, with or without coronavirus. That’s the truth. The truth is that we may have this false sense of security when we’re not in coronavirus. We think that there’s things that are going to be more permanent and structured. But the true reality is that the nature of life is ever-changing. And there is no way to be sure about the future.

Kimberly: 00:32 So what do we do? What we do is that we anchor into the now. And again, as Buddha taught, it’s how we rise up in every moment in the now, in the eternal now that keeps coming. The now, the now, the now. So it means that we show up in that moment. It means that we come with our energy and our love and our focus and our presence. And we dive as deep as we can into the present moment. And we try not to analyze the future. And if our mind starts to go there, which is, of course, a natural aspect of being human, just like training a dog and the monkey mind, as the Zen Buddhists would call it, we just bring the mind back and back to the present. And we can take some deep breaths. We can just shift a little bit. We can get up and we can take a little walk around for five minutes just to clear our mind. Movement is good for shifting our mood. Or we can do a meditation. But we want to keep bringing it back to the now.

Kimberly: 01:44 And again, the reality is that the future has never been uncertain. Now I understand that now there’s even more that feels ungrounded, but in a way, I think that the positive side, if we look to the positive side, is that in moments of crisis, in moments of great change, it is a catalyst for igniting more potential inner growth. So when things are going really well and there’s nothing that feels too scary, then we might just sort of drift along. But this is a time where we can really go inward and learn to trust the security within, being anchored to ourselves.

Kimberly: 02:32 So that’s what I would say, Natalie. And we definitely have a bunch of free guided meditations for you over at mysolluna.com. If you want to get started with the Four Cornerstone ebook as well, the guide to live this life, I think is a really great way to just feel anchored into the now. And again, just something we have to do day in and day out. Just trying to be more and more present, being here, and bringing ourselves back here.

Question 2: It’s one thing to stay positive within myself, but quite another when it comes to helping my teenage daughter be positive. Do you have any practices I can share that would help to navigate these uncertain times?

Kimberly: 03:04 Now the next question, thank you so much for your question, my love. Next question comes from Leah. She’s from Green River, Utah. She said, “It’s one thing to stay positive within myself, but quite another when it comes to helping my teenage daughter be positive. Do you have any practices I can share that would help to navigate these uncertain times?” So Leah, thank you so much for your question. Again, yes, this is a big one. I don’t have teenagers yet, but of course, teenagers aren’t fully formed adults, so there’s a lot for them to process. They don’t have yet the full breadth of maturity and they’re still developing. I remember what I was like as a teenager and I was riddled with anxiety. So I can only imagine for teenagers thinking about, “Well, what’s the world’s going to be like when I’m an adult, or am I even going to be able to go to college? Is there going to be college?” And there’s just a lot of questions.

Kimberly: 04:04 So I would say, as a family, or as a mother-daughter unit, if you will, I think it’s beautiful to foster any practices with your daughter that can bring her with you back to the now. So for instance, meditation, which I just talked about, which is the most obvious one, as a family or together. If you can do some breath work and teach her how to calm her body and to meditate and to begin to practice. It’s something that will serve her for the rest of her life. And maybe something that she may or may not get into right away. But I think offering it as a practice and teaching her how to feel into her body, and to be here in this moment, and teaching her that, “In this moment, everything is okay. And that’s what we do. We just live moment to moment, honey.” And you can just have some conversations.

Kimberly: 05:08 I think that introducing her to a journal and the idea that it’s a great thing to express ourselves and to not push down feelings. And sometimes it’s helpful to write things down. It’s helpful in the processing process. As a teenager, I was a big journaler, actually. I’ve always been a big writer. So that’s where it started for me. And then, I also think that doing things together that keep her in the now is a wonderful thing as well.

Kimberly: 05:42 So for instance, in the evening when school’s done, and if she’s doing remote schooling and things are quieter, it’s when we can get in our own heads. So maybe in the evening is where you cook a meal together and you really focus on the ingredients. Maybe you play a board game together. It’s funny, because hubby and I have gotten really into Scrabble lately. We play quite a bit. But board games are just like good, old fun and use the mind. So it occupies the monkey mind in something that’s here and present. And we have to engage with the games. You have to think about your next move. So it’s a nice break from just watching the news in the evening, or just having time for the mind to wander.

Kimberly: 06:30 I also think that it’s important, from a wellness perspective, that your daughter continues to eat the best foods possible, that she’s exercising, getting fresh air, taking care of the body’s needs, so that she’s able to just feel as free and light and clear as possible. I also think, again, anxiety builds as waste builds in our colons. So just making sure her digestion is good, she’s taking Detoxy if she needs to. These are all really helpful as well. So, I mean, it would be amazing to hear back from you, Leah, and see if your teenager is open to meditation. I’d be interested in that.

Kimberly: 07:17 Bubby meditates with me. It’s very short sometimes. He’ll just kind of sit and do it for a little bit. And he’s a toddler, like just above toddler now. He’s just turned four. So he will scrunch his eyes and do it for a little bit, but there’s effort there. And again, it’s just the building of a practice. I also think just having a really… this is the last thing I’ll say… it’s just like a really open communication dialogue where your daughter can just feel that, again, besides her journaling, that you’re there and you can listen and she can really talk about what she’s feeling. Just helps to get it out of the body. I think a lot of teenagers aren’t the best at expressing their feelings and they bottle things up. So having that as a practice, as a family, I think can be really wonderful.

Kimberly: 08:08 All right, Beauties, those are our first two questions for our show today. We’re going to take a short break and I’ll be right back to answer two more questions for you guys.

Break

Kimberly: All right, Beauties. We are back from our break and there are two more questions on this topic, which is how to get your life back amid coronavirus.

Question 3: I find your four cornerstones very interesting and wonder how you would rate these with importance when it comes to our mindset in dealing with COVID.

Our next question comes from Aubrey, who is in Tampa, Florida, and she writes, “I find your four cornerstones very interesting and wonder how you would rate these with importance when it comes to our mindset in dealing with COVID.” So I’ll read, this is a really great question.

Kimberly: 08:48 I will say that the way that I created the cornerstones was very organic. I used to live with clients for a few months at a time sometimes, and they were getting ready for a film, doing a press tour, on film, whatever it was. And it was just a wonderful experience. It’s not what I do day-to-day now, which I, A, don’t want to be doing anymore, to be honest. It’s a lot to be away for a couple of months here and there. But, B, I just couldn’t do it with kids, of course, and a hubby. But I learned so much about people and about working with people and how to find the best results.

Kimberly: 09:34 And so the food part of my work had always been more forward-facing because I think it’s easier to latch onto recipes. But the reality is that I was doing these four cornerstone practices from the get-go with all of my clients. I would meditate with most all of them, the ones that I lived with. And we’d talk about spirituality. There’s a big emotional… I mean, maybe the emotional component was the biggest for me in client work, like helping them process, talking through. Didn’t really do journaling with them, but just this emotional processing.

Kimberly: 00:00 I’ll say it’s not meant to be hierarchical, but definitely they’re meant to work as a system. I will say, though, if I did have to rank them, I would say that by far and away, the most important one is spiritual growth. And the reason I say that is because food is always important for keeping up your energy and keeping your body cleansed. Taking care of your body is super important always because it is our temple. Emotionally, we need to process so we don’t repress and suppress, and that we have really high levels of, of mental health. We can take care of our mental health and that’s really important during COVID.

Kimberly: 00:48 But spiritual growth, which I define as the path to connect to your true self, to understand yourself, to go deep inside of you, to whatever version of spirit that you connect to, or whether it’s love or God or whatever word you want to use, that is our anchor. That is our true anchor. So like I was saying in our first question, we’ve never been certain about the future and we think life is going to be a certain way, but the reality is life is always changing. I’m sure you’ve had big things happen in your life. You know, for me, when my mom passed away out of nowhere, it was just like, what? Like oh, anything can really happen. And it’s true. So to me right now, this is the time to strengthen our connection with our deep selves, with our spirit. Because if we do that, then we can feel anchored in unanchored times when everything is going to just chaos seemingly on the outside, just corona and then there’s just all sorts of political things happening right now. And social action and so much movement that we can be in that, but not of it, you know. As Yoga Nanda says in the world, but not of the world.

Kimberly: 02:13 And so the spiritual growth cornerstone is what gives you that. It allows you to feel very deeply anchored and very deeply connected to the fact that safety and security, true safety and security comes from something else. It doesn’t come from the government. It doesn’t come from a predictable life. It comes from deep inside of you. So the way to access that is through your meditations, it is going into that stillness and that space. And I’ll say it again we have free guided meditations for you. I continue to work on more and develop them because I think that potentially has the biggest impact, could have the biggest impact on your life. I would say it has on mine. And also when I’m connected to myself, I’m not as into food cravings and, and food treats because I just feel like there is so much energy that I’m able to get from other sources. And so, yeah, I would definitely rank the spiritual growth component as the most important one.

Question 4: Life moves forward, despite COVID. However, how can we feel like we have our lives back, even though we’re clearly still in the midst of this virus. Being a wife and a mother, I feel like I need to lead by example. However, I’m not feeling very example like.

Kimberly: 00:01 Okay. So our fourth and last question comes from Denise and she is in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and she writes life moves forward, despite COVID. However, how can we feel like we have our lives back, even though we’re clearly still in the midst of this virus. Being a wife and a mother, I feel like I need to lead by example. However, I’m not feeling very example like. Denise, thank you so much for your question and for tuning in, Mama.

Kimberly: 00:26 I know it’s hard because we do always want to be that shining example, but we’re human and we have feelings and we’re not always going to be so ideal in every way for our children and our families, but we can show them. We can lead by example in being authentic and finding inner strength and also showing resilience.

Kimberly: 00:57 So life has changed and shifted, but we only feel really upset I think, or distressed by the situation, if we keep lamenting the gap between where it is now and where it could be or what it used to be like. Versus again, back to the first question about being really fully here in the now, being in the present means this is what is showing up and how can we be in the most harmony with the moment? How can we not resist it? We know that when we resist, which is like, “I don’t want like this. I don’t want this stupid COVID to be here anymore. I want my old life back,” that’s resistance. And sure we can do that, but I can tell you right now, it’s not going to make anything feel better. Resistance makes it harder. When we can surrender and let go, it means that we start to adjust and we don’t have those heavy expectations weighing us down. And we can just feel so much more flow and light coming in.

Kimberly: 02:09 I will say that for me it was really hard in the beginning. I had a lot of resistance because Bubby … I was so tired when I was pregnant and Bubby’s school stopped pretty immediately as his preschool, and I was just like, “Oh, what’s going on?” But then the funny thing is I just stopped lamenting and waiting for school to come back, which it never did at the end of the year. I just started living again. And I just started living my life, and sure it’s different and we have to wear masks and we don’t get to go to all the stores and the parties we used to go to, but in some ways, we’re home, we’re rooted, we’re connecting a lot as a family. I have more time to meditate. I don’t have to go to events that I don’t always want to go to.

Kimberly: 03:02 So we just start living our life from here and stop as much as we can comparing our lives to how they were. And so leading by example, for me, means getting on with your life and shifting. So maybe there’s hobbies or books you want to read that you never had a chance to, maybe there’s different ways you want to decorate the house or do some clean outs or just shift and adjust.

Kimberly: 03:25 Now, I know this is easier said than done for someone not going through … of course, huge heart energy for anyone that has gotten sick or family members have gotten sick or have huge financial upheaval from that. I definitely don’t want to sound insensitive to that because those are massive changes. But I do think that the way forward is through.

Kimberly: 03:51 So it means not trying to suspend our lives, not waiting. It’s like holding our breath. We just go ahead. We show up in the now, we show up in each moment, we do our best with what is here right now. We don’t complain. It just keeps a sort of energy of not being really present, and again, it just doesn’t help anything. So just keep showing up as your beautiful, true self, Denise, keep giving all your heart, all your love to your family, to your husband, to your meditation practice, to staying anchored, staying off the news as much as possible.

Kimberly: 04:24 There is a Monday podcast that I want you guys to listen to, especially. It’s in the upcoming week, actually. It’s practices to find more joy in your life now. And I think for all of you guys tuned into this and listening to this, interested in this topic, it’s going to be a really great solo cast to give you some more, every day tools that you can utilize to bring in.

Kimberly: 04:52 But for now, I’ll say that life has to keep going on. Life must go on. It’s just, it’s different. There’s a shift, but it’s still life. We’re still alive. There’s still so much to appreciate and to be grateful and to be thankful for. And there’s so many ways we can keep growing. I feel like this time for me has been a time of tremendous growth and I am so grateful in many ways for this period as strange and interesting as it’s been. It’s also been a way as I was saying earlier to go deeper and to really anchor in.

Thought of the Week

Kimberly: 05:40 So with that, I’m going to close with my thought of the week, which is around this topic actually. It comes from our great modern, spiritual thought leader, Eckhart Tolle, and he writes, “The secret to finding the deeper level in the other is finding the deeper level in yourself. Without finding it in yourself, you cannot see it in the other.”

Kimberly: 06:02 So again, this deeper level that he is talking about is going below the surface. On the surface, yes, it’s rocky and bumpy and shifting and seemingly crazy and chaotic. But when we can go deeper into the now, when we can go deeper into anchoring into ourselves, there is a place of stillness. There is a place of strength and there is a place of so much resilience that you will find inside of yourself. This light inside of you, and you realize, oh, outer circumstances don’t have to affect me as much as I thought. It’s what we work towards in our spiritual practice and in our meditations. It’s this place where we eventually start to work towards enlightenment. We become untouchable. We just go through life and we’re just not as affected as much by the outside world.

Kimberly: 06:56 So it doesn’t mean we’re not effected at all. Of course there’s major things going on, but it means that we don’t have to depend on them looking or being a certain way for us to feel okay. We’re okay. You are okay because you have yourself. That’s it, you’re breathing in and out, your alive. It’s such a gift. So anchor into that. It’s so simple, just breathing in and out and being here now. Yes, I know it may not seem ideal and it’s shifting, but again, you have this moment, you have yourself, you have God, you have everything.

Kimberly: 07:33 So I love you. I’ll be back here Monday, like I said, for the next podcast. I definitely recommend it and take great care of yourself till then. I’ll see you over at mysolluna.com or on Instagram. My handle is @_KimberlySnyder. Thank you so much. And sending you so much love.