We are witnessing what no one else has witnessed in our life time. 

We’ve all felt waves of uncertainly, fear, anxiety and worry. We’re human and even though some countries are experiencing this at greater levels than others, we feel this as a collective.

Now more than ever we’re connected to one another on a deeper level. We’re all experiencing the same changes and disruption to our lives – no one is exempt from this virus.

We’re now forced to live present moment. Our certainty and the control we thought we had has been taken away. In fact the truth is nothing was ever in our control, or certain in our lives, even before the virus. The only thing we really ever had and have control over is our thoughts, attitude and our actions. 

Being in quarantine for some is a struggle and for others it’s seen as a retreat. There are circumstances where naturally it will be more stressful, due to loss of jobs, no home or family members ill etc. However we can still choose to see this time as we want to see it. 

We have the power to choose to see this as a negative, stressful time, or we have the power to choose this as a positive time where we can make positive changes to ourselves and even others. When we have this attitude, life can become a little easier for us to navigate in times of turmoil.

I was recently telling my husband about a famous man named Victor Frankl, a neurologist, psychiatris and holocaust survivor who spent 3 years in various concentration camps. He is the author of a famous book called “Mans Search for Meaning”.   

He chronicles his experiences as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps during world war 2, and describes his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about and then imagining that outcome.

He was uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in the camps coped (or didn’t) with the experience. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest – and who offered proof that ‘everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances’.

The sort of person the concentration camp prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of camp influences alone. Frankl came to believe man’s deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. This outstanding work offers us all a way to transcend suffering and find significance in the art of living.