The coronavirus is a pandemic, but so is anxiety.
There’s a lot of fear and anxiety out in the world right now.
The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, was recently been labeled as a “pandemic” by the World Health Organization (WHO). Starting in Wuhan, China, the virus has spread to multiple countries across the world, including the United States. Stores, restaurants, and businesses are temporarily shutting down. Schools everywhere have moved online, and people are practicing social distancing.
If you’ve watched the news or been on the internet in the past month, you’ve read the headlines. While some of them are informative, others induce panic and fear, and the fear is going viral. Maybe you find yourself stuck at home, scrolling through never-ending headlines and news reports, and you’ve never been more anxious in your life.
How can we best be leaders in a time like this? How do we keep ourselves from panicking while having the correct response to a crisis?
There’s two pandemics in the world right now: The coronavirus and anxiety. There’s doctors, researchers, and health professionals all over the world working on solving the first, and it’s up to us to keep the second under control.
I’ve got Dr. Jud Brewer on The School of Greatness today to give us 3 ways to keep anxiety from going viral.
Dr. Jud Brewer is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and associate professor in psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT.
As an addiction psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for treating addictions, Dr. Jud has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety. In 2012, Dr. Jud gave a TED talk about a simple way to break a bad habit, and in 2017, he wrote a book on the subject called The Craving Mind.
In times like these, mental habits are easy to form. There is a lot of scary headlines and false information out there right now, and when fear sets in, we often try to medicate it with bad habits.
So join me on Episode 930 and listen to what Dr. Jud has to say about the coronavirus and how to keep our minds from spiraling into fear and anxiety.
Some Questions I Ask:
- What is more contagious: a physical virus or an anxiety virus? (5:43)
- How can we keep good mental hygiene right now? (7:40)
- What has been your honest reaction to the coronavirus escalating so fast? (18:39)
In this episode, you will learn:
- How our minds actually work with anxiety and fear (2:21)
- How to build mental resilience in a time of scarcity and anxiety (21:20)
- Ways to cleanse your mind from the anxiety of coronavirus (30:07)
- Plus much more…
Show Notes:
Transcript of this Episode
Music Credits:
Music Credit:
Kaibu by Killercats
Stitcher
Pandora
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