I did not expect to be writing about what Covid taught me. My teenage daughter and I made it 18-months without getting Covid. We took every precaution and were vaccinated when, two-days after a Thanksgiving trip to Boston, we tested positive for Covid-19. Given this may be true for so many others, I thought I would share four tips that helped us cope with Covid – or that may be useful in any other unpredictable, anxiety producing event.

1. Cultivate calm

I’m super big on self-care and doing everything possible to stay calm – morning meditations, daily long walks with my dogs, yoga, journaling, meeting with my coach, and checking in with my therapist. Yet none of that helped when I got Covid. The anxiety was real. So imagine where I might have been without everything I was already doing to stay calm…

A few months ago, I established a morning meditation routine after a conversation with my coach about an overall sense of unsettledness that I was experiencing. Each morning, I tune into my body to determine what I feel like I need. Sometimes, I just breathe, sometimes I repeat a mantra (“I surrender” is a really good one for me), and sometimes I choose a guided meditation from the Insight Timer app.

Morning meditations have helped me to start my day from a place of calm and they have also helped me to be more present for my work and for my clients. Meditating helps me make healthier choices and to return regularly to operating from a place of abundance.

But I hadn’t been closing my days with meditation. In fact, most of my days ended with me, on the couch, watching TV. The onset of Covid had me tossing and turning at night, and going deep into the web with questions like: “Will I ever smell again?” “Will this ringing in my ears ever stop?” “Does my teenager’s asymptomatic Covid mean she can’t get long covid?” And many more. But guess what? Googling that shit makes it worse.

This taught me to now end my days with more meditation. We can’t hear it too many times, we only have the present. When I feel anxious, I’m ruminating over what happened or stressing about what might happen and none of that makes me feel any better. The present makes me feel better.

When you hear that noise in your head and that chaotic buzz in your body, maybe because of Covid or maybe just because – sit in a chair, ground your feet to the earth, and focus your attention on your body. Breathe your energy down and drop the noise and the buzz into the earth. Make space for the fear, and witness it, but try to let go of controlling it.

One of my favorite poems in the world is called, Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. In the poem, she says, “you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” I repeat that over and over until I feel calm.

2. Take nothing for granted

This is my first experience with the loss of one of my senses and it is disorienting. I’m one of the people for whom Covid meant losing the sense of smell. I fried tofu with garlic, spring onions, shallots, ginger, szechuan pepper, red chilis and black pepper. Smell: zero. Taste: nothing.

Lately, I’ve been practicing trying to smell again, training my brain to remember what things smell like. I’ve chosen a few scents that are strong and familiar to practice with, and more importantly, I’m paying attention and feeling grateful for what is available to me: sight, sound and touch. I notice that as I appreciate those things more, they fill me with a sense of gratitude for what I do have. And the act of working to smell again, grounds me in the present.

Gratitude may seem like an overused word these days, but if we say it alot, it’s because it matters. When we operate from a place of gratitude, we feel calmer and more connected. We stop racing to get what we don’t have, especially when we’re not sure if we will ever have it again. Instead, we appreciate what we do have.

I’m enjoying books and music more. I’m appreciative of what I can’t smell -–- like the stuff I have to pick up when I walk my dogs. Finding the silver lining really works.

3. Connect. Connect. Connect.

Something about having Covid made me stop and take stock of what I do and how I do it. I am a coach and I teach leadership, so depth of connection has always been critical. However, this has made me feel more deeply.

Strong relationships are the strongest predictor of life satisfaction. Feeling connected to each other and to the purpose in our work is far more important than making money or achieving success. During this time, I have noticed the deep and sustained impact that human connection has on my own sense of wellbeing.

Also because I’ve been isolating, the experience of connecting on Zoom has been a gift rather than a fatigue inducing annoyance. I have looked forward to every session with every client and have been touched more deeply by the power of sitting with people who are working to improve the quality of their lives, their leadership and their contributions.

4. “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers

In Emily Dickinson’s famous poem, hope is the strong-willed bird that sits in each of us and sings no matter what. More recently, Barack Obama talked about hope not as blind optimism, not as ignoring the enormity of what we are all facing, but as the ability to cultivate courage to remake the world as it should be. I have been grateful for science and I continue to have hope. My case of Covid is mild, because I’m vaccinated and because we have made such progress in the last 18-months, and it gives me hope that we will continue to meet the challenges ahead, no matter how big.

This reflective time has taught me that being calm, grateful and connected provides me the foundation to have hope for a better future. With the people I coach, I often talk about positive emotional attractors. When the leaders with whom I work face even bigger challenges and opportunities, I have them visualize it all going well, and I ask, “what do you see?” and “how do you feel it in your body?” From that place, and with this foundation, we rise to meet the challenges of the day, even those we can’t entirely control, like Covid.

A few years ago, I read Brené Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness. Like so much of her work, it’s reflective, accessible and eminently actionable. Her acronym BRAVING (which stands for boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, non-judgment and generosity) has been my guide for the 2020s.

I was so ready to close the books on the few years that preceded this decade. I was finally seeing the light at the end of a dark three-year tunnel that included my father’s death (the person to whom I was the closest in the world), a painful and unexpected divorce (that left me lonely and afraid), and facing my daughter’s depression and my own anxiety (both of which I had been spectacularly unaware).  

Years of hard work with gifted therapists and coaches helped me feel ready to usher in a new era of joy.  

Then nothing proceeded to plan (thanks, COVID!).  

BRAVING has helped me navigate the new normal. Here’s how:

Boundaries

I went to a parenting class when my daughter was small. We were asked to draw pictures of our  child — one in which the child was caged, one in which the child was surrounded by lots of white space and a squiggly line, and one in which the child stood alone in a huge, empty space with no lines.  

Like a mother without any sense of boundaries, I showed this to my five-year old and asked what she thought. “You do that one, Mama,” she told me, pointing to the child alone in space. And then she pointed to the squiggly line and said, “I want that.”

I got better (slightly) at setting boundaries for her, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that I got really good at setting my own. And much better at respecting those of others.  

We’ve been forced to reckon with what safety means to us and our families, and what it means to those around us. I’ve been asked, at work and at home, to do things I don’t feel comfortable doing. I’ve said no. I’ve asked others, at work and at home, to do things they’ve not felt comfortable doing. They’ve said no. I can’t overstate the positive impact this clarity has had on me and my relationships.  

Reliability

If you want to create a trusting environment, do what you say you are going to do. Pre-2020s I was famous for saying, “Sure, I’ll be there,” just before cancelling when my busy life got in the way. I was known for my unreliability. My family started saying, “we don’t know if Ali’s coming until we see the whites of her eyes.”  

My daughter tells me beautifully and honestly that I just wasn’t there for her.  

I. Had. No. Idea.  

This past year and a half has changed all of that. It’s hard not to be where you say you’re going to be when you have nowhere else to go. With all meetings by Zoom and taking place at home, I haven’t missed a thing.

Despite living in isolation, I find I’m having shared emotional experiences with nearly everyone — collective trauma, grief and burnout — all of which have made me even more aware of how important it is for us to keep our commitments to one another. 

When my daughter wants my attention, I give it to her fully. When my colleagues schedule time with me, I show up. I can now honestly say, “you can count on me.”

Accountability

Accountability means taking ownership for our mistakes, apologizing and making amends.  

There’s nothing like over a year of solitude to create some space for contemplation. I’ve found myself at the line between owning my mistakes and ruminating over what I should have done. And, if you’ve been following me, you know that I preach what I most need to learn — no shoulding on ourselves or others.

Instead, accountability has meant meeting myself with compassion. Reflecting on the things I did or didn’t do, digesting the feelings that accompany how I may have let myself or others down, and integrating the experience so that it becomes a source of wisdom. And then apologizing.  To my daughter, to my work colleagues, to my ex-husband, and to others I let down. 

I have learned to say, “you counted on me to show up fully, and I did not. I’m sorry for that.” 

Vault

The vault is another name for confidentiality. We are reminded to only share what is ours to share. Simply put, don’t gossip. As a coach and a former lawyer, I have always taken confidentiality very seriously. Nearly every professional conversation I have is confidential.  

I’ve watched how forced separation from others has changed many workplace dynamics. Without meetings at the school gates, in coffee shops and office corridors, there has been less opportunity for gossip. This has been refreshing!

I’ve also noticed even more space for self-reflection in me and in my coaching clients. Funnily enough, if we don’t hide “self-view” in Zoom, we’re literally “seeing” ourselves in our conversations. That holding up the mirror has helped many honor the commitment to only share what is ours to share. We literally see ourselves making that promise, and we keep it.

Integrity

Do what is right over what is fun, comfortable or easy. That is how Brené Brown defines integrity. We’re living through times where we’re all called to learn about and to address systemic inequality and injustices wherever we can. These conversations are anything but fun, comfortable or easy. The political polarization that’s happening around the globe is frightening. Yet I continue to be hopeful as I, and others with whom I work, find the courage to have uncomfortable conversations every day about what is right and what is just.  

Non-Judgment

This has been the best part of this period for me. It’s about not judging ourselves for what we need. And boy has this time taught me that whatever we need is just fine! I’ve never in my many years of coaching seen so much written about self-care, and with such clarity in that it has nothing to do with spa days and facials. It means taking care of ourselves.  

I’ve been practicing a lot of gratitude about living in Southern California these last few years for all kinds of reasons, especially sunshine. The number of times I’ve sat outside in my garden tending to (and sometimes talking to) my flowers and heard that voice in my head saying, “you should go be more productive” is a lot.  

But I’ve cultivated an inner response. At the beginning of the pandemic, I listened to an interview with the author Elizabeth Gilbert. She says she writes in her journal in the form of a dialogue between herself and love. Here’s my go at that:

Ali:  You’ve spent enough time in the garden. You should go work and be productive.

Love:  I’m here for you.

Ali:  Thank you, love, for being here for me. What does that mean?

Love:  Keeping you warm and holding you close without judgment.

Ali: Thank you. I’ll stay in the garden a bit longer and feel this love. It gives me energy.

Generosity

And finally, make generous assumptions. I’ve been let down during this time. We all have. But I’ve found the bottomless well of compassion for myself and others, and the practice of assuming positive intention of those close to me has been utterly liberating.  

We’re off to a rough start, but I am optimistic about the new roaring twenties. Stay safe, awake and connected. We’ll get through this together and be stronger for it.