How To Stop Coronavirus Fear From Controlling Your Life

The COVID-19 pandemic has stirred hysteria. Driven by fear and frenzy, it’s a time when we are confronted with making challenging decisions, and too often we follow suit observing others.

This is a metaphor for how we let fear guide us in many other areas of our life, maybe in your love and relationships or your work. Maybe with your kids. Maybe it’s just within your whole life.

Fear is a form of self-sabotage that is often at the root of unhappiness, confusion, and anxiety. The methods by which we make decisions can either wreak havoc on our lives or move us forward in a positive direction creating happiness and peace.

How To Stop Fear From Controlling Your Decisions

Your mind is your best friend, but it’s also your worst enemy. If you find yourself in doubt when making decisions, it’s important to be able to separate out the negative self-talk (your inner judge) from your inner wisdom.

When you aren’t clear on what you want, it’s easy to get pulled in many directions and get lost in the rabbit hole of indecision.

At some point, if you don’t make up your mind, someone else will make it up for you. Your inner judge may be the first, then comes secondary internal saboteurs, and then maybe society, family, or well-meaning friends.

These include decisions around your romantic life, financial life, social life, parenting, health and fitness, life vision, who and what to believe, or how to vote—the list is endless.

Being in a crossroads of indecision will lead to feeling confused, anxious, disappointed, stressed, or angry, and when you are in those states, it’s a sure sign your judge perspective is in control, especially in a time of crisis.

It’s easy to get stuck while trying to make the right decision.

Before you go into a shame spiral, remember that if you find yourself stuck or aren’t where you want at this point in your life, it’s probably not your fault.

And in the context of what’s going on now in the world, making a decision can induce paralyzing anxiety.

If you are unclear what you want and how to proceed in these turbulent times, the best place to start with identifying what your values are.

Without having a strong sense of what you value, you may unintentionally make a decision that goes against your value system that you don’t even know exists. The concept of values can sound cliché, but they are our roadmap, and once we know them, it can often feel like having an “aha” moment and making decisions becomes crystal clear.

If you find it hard to make a decision, try some of the following suggestions in order to rediscover and reevaluate your values:

• How do you identify spiritually?

• What aspects of life are non-negotiable?

• If you had a whole day to yourself and unlimited money, what would you do?

While making a decision becomes tricky, falling back on your values can make all of the difference.

You may wonder how come you didn’t have this list before.

Making decisions, especially tough ones, takes energy.

It’s hard to make decisions at times because of the energy it drains from our bodies and spirits. There is something called “decision fatigue” or “decision burnout”. When we find ourselves at that fork in the road, unsure too many times during the day, even if it’s about something as simple as ordering a meal at a restaurant, we exhaust ourselves. All of that back and forth takes more out of us than just moving forward.

What Causes Decision Fatigue?

Decision fatigue is caused by being forced to make too many decisions over a fixed period of time.

On a daily basis, our mental energies can become drained from the effort spent weighing all the various positives, negatives, and trade-offs on what outcome we choose.

It’s not uncommon for people with decision fatigue to end up taking the path of least resistance or even going into “shutdown” mode, resulting in no or poor choices and an accelerated sense of anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, and anger, all reinforcing that stuck or stalled place which is really frustrating.

Tips to avoid decision fatigue:

1. Listen to your heart.

It’s easy to get caught in the trap of logical reasoning. There is a time and place to prioritize logic. When it comes to making a decision, listening to your heart or your gut is the best way to make decisions based on what you truly want. Making decisions based on what society wants or what logical reasoning tells you is usually correlated with what someone else wants.

The more you follow your heart, the easier it gets. Your intuition works the same way. The more often you follow it the more often It speaks to you. When you are in a flow of being connected to your higher guidance you don’t have to worry about doing anything external to figure out what choice to make because you’ll know you can always go within.

2. Sleep on it.

It’s common to sleep on it when being tasked to make a decision. This speaks to the significance of stepping away from stimulus and giving yourself some space to breathe and connect to your higher guidance. Taking a run, going to yoga, and creating literal space in your home by cleaning and decluttering. Having a clear space and clear mind helps you make decisions from a grounded state of mind allowing you to choose what you want instead of choosing at random from panic.

3. Lead from a calm place.

If you take proper steps to make a decision and feel confident that the decision came from the right place, then you won’t have to worry about second-guessing your decision. When we make a decision at random or under pressure, there is a much greater likelihood that we will second guess ourselves. When you are crystal clear about your choice you can avoid expending more time and energy reversing the choice and making a new one.

While we move through the pandemic deciphering so much unknown, making efficient decisions from a calm place is crucial. The better able you are to make decisions at this time, the easier it will be to hang in there until this passes.