Fear breeds contempt and there’s an underlying feeling of apprehension everywhere.
It’s being drummed into us that the world will be a different place now and we must adapt or die.
The question is, how best to come out of the crisis?
We’ll certainly realise we don’t need half the stuff we once did.
It’s time mass consumerism took a back seat in any case.
But people are afraid, they’ve every right to be, but it’s what we do with this fear that will propel us forward.
How will we emerge from this crisis?
It’s not what happens to us in life that determines our fate, it’s how we react.
There has been so much hand- holding by the Government, which was welcome.
But it can’t continue indefinitely, and we’ll end up paying for it in the long run in our future taxes. Those who didn’t suffer with anxiety before are now almost paralysed by the unknown.
So we can choose to go two ways – sink into the abyss of the predicted depression or rise above it and become innovators.
I’ve heard anecdotally people are afraid to get back out there after months of not working.
They feel they’ve lost their skillset but, more importantly, their confidence.
In my 20s I thought I was going through a quarter-life crisis and I read the best-selling book by Susan Jeffers, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway.
If we apply her methodology to everything we do, fear can become empowering.
It’s not about eliminating it, it’s about feeling it and doing the thing you’re scared of anyway.
Once we overcome what we are frightened of, we gain confidence.
Whatever we decide, we will always have to face fear. In fact, even the slightest change will create anxiety, a fear of failure.
We have reflexes that can trap us in a sense of failure.
The only way to change is to act and surpass ourselves, leading to greater self-confidence.
It’s comforting to know everyone has fear, even the most successful people in the world.
Times of duress can provide a powerful stimulus for entrepreneurship, it’s when problems occur that solutions arise.
The iPod was created two months after the September 11 attacks when Apple introduced us to the tiny portable music device.
The basketball game was invented in 1881 but it was played with a soccer ball.
During the recession in 1894, the games inventor Dr Naismith asked A.G Spalding to create a ball specific to the game and the basketball was born.
We can take inspiration from pandemics gone by.
The similarity between the situation Isaac Newton found himself in Cambridge in 1665 and society today is uncanny. Between the summer of 1665 and the spring of 1667, Newton made two long visits to Woolsthorpe in order to escape the plague affecting Cambridge.
The bubonic “Great Plague” of 1665 to 1666 was the worst outbreak in England since the black death of 1348.
It spread rapidly throughout the country and heroic quarantine measures were taken to stop the spread.
What is different is how Newton set his mind to work during self-isolation.
Whilst most of us won’t come up with scientific revelations, it’s inspiring what can be achieved in times of solitude.
In this period of deep thinking, Newton’s holistic approach enabled him to address the question, “How does the universe work?”
He himself told the story that when he watched an apple fall from the tree outside his chamber window, he questioned why it falls straight to the ground.
In answering that question, Newton theorised that everything in existence is attracted to everything else and this attraction, the force of gravity, binds the universe together.
In later years, he told how enforced times of isolation were the most intellectually fruitful of his entire life.
If you really want to do something, you will. You’ll find a way and now, more than ever, is the time to be creative, try something you’ve always been afraid of doing, for fear of failure.
We need to train ourselves bit by bit so that fear no longer paralyses us, preventing us from doing anything.
If we act like the victim we won’t get anywhere, we need to face into the adversity which will give us strength.
