Well I have woken up this morning albeit very early starting to feel normal after 10 ten days. My cough is now infrequent and the chest pain is diminished. After I wrote yesterdays entry I felt really quite unwell and emotional. I thought I was getting worse again, and for a moment I started overthinking and scaring myself. So I spent the afternoon wallowing in my self-pity. I wasn’t a pleasant person to live with yesterday afternoon. Thankfully I feel much better today and feeling quite positive about starting back at work next week.
Today is tinged with a bit of sadness. Today would have been my niece’s wedding day. We were all looking forward to getting together as a family to celebrate Katie and Craig’s wedding. It has been over a year since all of us have been together. My brother, sister, mum, and niece and nephews all live in an around Chester, and we are over in Hull. The last time we were in Chester was before Christmas, but we did not manage to see everybody, so today would have been a chance to catch up with everybody. Its a shame but not the end of the world. Katie and Craig have postponed the wedding until the autumn. As Katie is pregnant we will have a new addition to the family and a double reason to celebrate. We have put Mum in strict quarantine until this is all over, so all will be good in the autumn, and gives us all something wonderful to look forward to.
As I have no symptoms to really speak of now, I am going to change the time of my diary entries to the afternoon or evening from now on. I did this at the beginning of this process so I could cover what my days at work had been like. So god knows how exciting tomorrows’ entry will be, describing my days moving from the front room to the kitchen, and back to the front room. Brace yourself.
I will leave you today with a reminder of how to get through each day at the moment. About a month ago I wrote a blog about how to make your organisation resilient in the face of coronavirus. It was based on the work of Diane Coutu, it works just as well for individuals and more or less sums up what I have mentioned in some of my more recent diary entries. Diane suggests to be resilient you have to possess three characteristics, and these characteristics can be worked on, we can all develop them with a bit of attention. Below is a little checklist you can use to help you remain resilient and go with the flow during these testing times.
- Be realistic; accepting that things will not always go the way you want them or expect them to, so make plans that allow for that. Make room in your mind for the bad, distressing times, give them the space they deserve. To be happy, we have to experience sadness.
- Have purpose; be true to what you value, understand why you do what you do. Being a parent, and working for the NHS are important to me, because they make me feel useful, which is one of my core values. Be clear what motivates you and remind yourself of that everyday. Use it as your anchor. Keep working on this, especially when you need to dig deep. I do what I do to be a valued useful member of the human race, and sometimes I have to be courageous to do that. I remind myself of that when I am struggling.
- Be creative; there are plenty of opportunities to be creative at the moment. There are plenty of shows on the TV encouraging creativity, I noticed Jamie Oliver had a show showing us how to make meals from what we have in the cupboard. There are loads of sites on the internet doing the same. I would also encourage you to use your own imagination and come up with solutions to your own problems. What do you have that you can use differently to make life easier. If it doesn’t work, you have something to laugh about. When I have been skint over the years I am have created some dreadful meals when trying to come up with something in the cupboards, but then again I have made some great meals out of nothing. It can sometimes go back to being realistic. To get yourself in the mood for being creative, go lay down at the top of the stairs.
So there you have it, be realistic, creative and have a purpose and you will ride this storm. Hopefully most of you will be reassured that you have been doing this already. Remember you have to have all 3 characteristics to be resilient.
We’ve got this, it will pass. See you all tomorrow.
Connected Coaching 
As always, wise words 😊 so glad to hear you’re on the mend at last xx
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