How To Stay Calm & Maintain A Healthy Perspective During A Crisis

With everything going on in the world right now, it's important to check in and do your best to stay calm, and stand firm in your faith and hope. In this special episode, Glenn gives his take on how to maintain a healthy perspective in the midst of this crisis.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hey everybody,

Welcome.

So today we are doing a special talk about the thing.

Yes.

The virus.

Yes.

So,

You know,

Everything has gone completely upside down the past,

Not even a full week.

And,

You know,

There's a lot of high anxiety and a lot of worry and a lot of hysteria and a lot of a lot of stuff.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And so it's being fed from every angle and it's tough,

You know,

It's so fear based and,

You know,

The what ifs and oh my God and,

You know,

That's where the fear lives in that space where there's no real follow through.

You don't think it all the way through,

You know,

So when it's the I think the best thing that we can do is try to stay out of that fear as much as possible,

Because it's,

You know,

It just feeds it.

And it's,

You know,

It just really felt like somebody just dumped a gallon of gasoline on a fire that it exploded,

You know,

And I mean,

And that it's this is what I always talk about when I'm talking about energy.

You know,

Everything is energy and if we feed it,

It expands.

And,

You know,

This got out there and I'm not saying that there is,

You know,

That we shouldn't be cautious or we shouldn't have information or,

You know,

I'm not saying that what I'm saying is that when this started,

When the information started getting out,

It was just sheer panic.

And everybody just got swallowed up with the fear and threw a gigantic ball of collective fear on top of this fire and it exploded with energy,

You know,

Into mass hysteria and insanity.

I mean,

The toilet paper thing,

Like,

I mean,

That is,

I think that's a good example because,

Like,

I literally had to go,

I get curious after a while,

After a few days,

I was like,

Okay,

Like,

There's got to be some,

I understand people are panicking.

And when people panic,

They don't usually slow down and think real clearly.

But there's got to be something with toilet paper.

Like,

Why did the toilet paper,

Why did the panic go in the direction of the toilet paper specifically?

And when I started asking,

You know,

I literally put a post out there on Facebook because when I started researching it,

All I got was these hypothetical psychological reasonings why people were panicking.

I'm like,

I know why people are panicking.

And I know that the panic has turned into toilet paper.

What I don't know is why specifically toilet paper.

So what I kept,

You know,

What I heard from people was like,

Yeah,

It's just sheer panic.

And for some reason,

Somebody went,

Oh my God,

Toilet paper,

Probably,

Who knows,

Somewhere on the other side of the world or somewhere in the United States.

And then everybody got toilet paper on the brain.

And it cleared.

People are like,

Obsessing about food,

Which is usually more necessary than toilet paper when it comes to surviving,

You know,

Or something to drink or how any medicines to deal with an illness.

They're focused on toilet paper.

And I think that that's such a good example of how the mass hysteria is just how out of control it is.

So it's,

You know,

I think we need to relax and just slow down and understand that we are feeding this.

We are feeding it.

I don't think,

You know,

I believe this is when the bigger the situation,

The noisier it is,

The louder it gets,

The more energy it has to it,

The more we need to lean on our truth.

And so,

You know,

Everybody that is walking around attempting to live a spiritual life,

Well,

Here's your chance.

Everybody who goes to church on Sunday and identifies themselves with a specific religion or a specific God.

Well,

Here is your chance.

And it's like,

You know,

Faith is not true until it's tried.

It's,

You know,

This is the time where we need to lean on where we find our strength,

Where we find our peace,

Where love comes from.

And the noisier it is,

The harder it is to do that.

I get,

But I get that.

But it doesn't mean that like you get to completely abandon a God that you say you believe in to go run around and buy 32 pounds of toilet paper.

So,

Relax,

Breathe,

Slow down and make some sense,

You know,

Put some distance between you and the situation and gain some perspective.

And the noisier it is,

The farther you need to step back to gain that perspective.

And,

You know,

I'm impatient playing the one step back.

I believe two steps back.

No,

I step all the way back and start with my spiritual beliefs and then work my way forward.

You know,

I find it easier that way.

So it's,

You know,

So I start when if something big like this starts happening,

I go,

Okay,

Well,

Glenn,

Do you really have,

You know,

What is this?

Supposedly the biggest threat is your life.

So should you be fearful of your life?

And with my spiritual beliefs,

I believe that I am eternal.

I believe that when I'm done on this planet,

I'm going to go back to eternal love and peace.

So,

No,

I'm not real scared of that.

It's okay.

I'll go back and from which I came and I'll be love and peace.

That doesn't sound horrible to me.

So I'm okay with that aspect.

And this is a really good time to do work on that particular thing.

If it's something that you struggle with,

Do some work on that.

You know,

That's one of the most common fears,

Fear of death.

Well,

Why do we fear something that we that everybody is going to experience?

We know is coming.

It's inevitable.

And once it happens,

We're just no matter what your belief is,

You're fine.

Like,

You know,

Like if you're a decent person,

You go to heaven.

If you believe you're just eternal,

You go to eternal peace and love.

If you believe that there's nothing after death,

Well,

Then you're worm food and you can't sense anything anyway.

So there's no suffering.

So it doesn't really matter what your belief system is.

If you die,

You're okay.

You know,

I mean,

Of course,

There's one belief system that if you're running around killing people and hurting others,

Then you go to hell.

Try not to do that.

Maybe if that's your lifestyle,

You've got some other work to do anyway,

You know.

But I mean,

For the most part,

Most people are pretty good when they die.

So,

You know,

So I start there and then set my foundation there and then go,

OK,

What if I get sick?

Well,

I either get better or I die.

So I'm good with the death thing.

If I get better,

Well,

That's that's OK.

I've been sick.

I've been viciously sick before in my life.

In the midst of.

My body breaking down from severe alcoholism and drug abuse,

And I still got better.

You know,

So I'll either I'll make it so I'll either get better or I'll die either way.

It's a win win.

From my perspective,

You know,

This is my personal perspective.

I think that we all have to work through our own perspectives and find where we can locate some peace in this and get it in perspective.

And then,

Of course,

We can if if we feel that there's appropriate measures to take,

We can take some appropriate measures.

This isn't you know,

I'm not saying this to say,

Oh,

Well,

We should disregard everything that the government's saying and not do anything.

No,

I'm not saying that,

You know,

We can still take care of ourselves and we can still take precautions.

But it's the energy in which we do so.

If we can take these precautions in an energy of peace,

Of peacefulness and of self-love,

Like I love myself.

I don't want to get sick.

That's not that is it.

Like,

You know,

Like if I love myself,

I'm not going to go.

Oh,

I'm going to go try to get sick.

Like,

No,

That's not very loving.

So I love myself.

So I'll take precautions,

But it's out of self-love.

It's not out of fear.

And I think that that's the biggest thing.

If we're feeding the fear of it,

The fear of it expands and it becomes what we're seeing now,

You know,

Mass hysteria.

And and also your love for others.

So because,

You know,

The so a lot of people,

Which we got it,

We have to be careful of because that people,

This is when people love to play the martyr.

We have to start with self-love.

If we start with love for others,

People are going to run around and start.

What people already started doing is they go.

I love old people in nursing homes.

So if you don't do what I think is appropriate to make sure that this doesn't spread out of fear,

Then you're trying to get people who who won't get better sick and you're a bad person.

It turns into this judgment martyrdom thing.

You know,

When we're when we shoot out of that gate only.

So start with the self-love and bring in the love of others.

Absolutely right now.

And then and when you come in that door,

Then it looks different,

Which is probably what you were just going to say.

You were probably going to come in another door there.

I just saw that.

That's OK.

But in general,

Yes.

So a lot of people have sort of and it's been said wrongly compared this.

But what do you have to compare to compared this to 10 years ago and the H1N1 virus that caused not.

I mean,

Nowhere to this level,

But but caused hysteria and a lot of illnesses and all of that.

And,

You know,

Because of the sort of not not the self-love and not the love and care for others of,

You know,

Like there were there were people that that were sick that did not take precautions and then got other people sick.

They didn't take the precautions to stop themselves from becoming sick and they didn't take the precautions.

And like I was one of the people that almost died at,

You know,

In that I I lost I for real was out for two weeks.

I was on a ventilator.

I have a scar.

I was truly about five scars over my body from it.

You know,

I lost two months in a hospital and psychologically like still pretty messed up in ways from it.

But I did not I did not exercise the caution that I should have at that time.

And I practice no self-love beforehand.

And by the way,

I didn't afterwards either.

So right,

You know,

That's what I was just seeing too.

Like you weren't on your spiritual path per se back then either.

Right.

You know,

So like you didn't have the tools to deal with this.

Yeah.

Whereas most people out that listen to my podcast.

And I know that especially with this one,

There might be people who don't normally listen that are listening.

Right.

So cool,

Because hopefully it's going to expand your mind to see things in a different way with any luck.

But most people,

You know,

Do have some tools.

I know you have a lot of tools you didn't have back then.

Like a whole box.

So how do you maintain calm and while taking it seriously and listening to the precautions and taking the necessary steps to make sure that you are OK and make sure that others are OK?

Well,

I think it's you know,

I think it's it's kind of what I was saying.

It's like take a disconnect from all the fear for a minute and gain some perspective.

Like what do you do you actually believe that there's some sort of higher power or God or that you're eternal or,

You know,

Start with a foundational big picture belief system.

And if that like if you actually believe that there is some sort of system in the universe.

Then you're kind of OK,

No matter what happens.

So that's what we're supposed to get our safety in all situations,

Not just in a crisis situation,

But in daily life.

We're not supposed to be freaking out because we forgot the broccoli at the grocery store.

We're not supposed to be living like that.

We're not supposed to be panicking and you know,

Having road rage because somebody put their blinker on too late.

There's so much fear and stress in this society,

And it's because nobody's really connecting with the safety,

Which is at their core,

Which is our spiritual center.

Once we if we can connect to our core safety and say,

You know what,

Worst case scenario,

It's going to be OK.

We're going to be on the other side of this,

Even if it's through death,

We're going to be on the other side of us.

This and it's going to be OK and start there and then you can just relax a little bit and then start,

You know,

Getting closer to the situation.

And as the fears pop up,

Oh,

Well,

What about this?

OK,

Well,

What about that?

See,

We don't slow down enough.

We go,

Oh,

My God,

What about this?

And what about this?

And what about this?

And oh,

My God,

What if that happens?

And we never go.

We never answer the question.

That's the problem.

We just that's where fear lives is we go,

Oh,

My God,

What about this?

And then we move on to the next fear and it just expands.

So if we go,

Oh,

My God,

What about this?

OK,

Well,

Stop for a minute.

What about that?

What if that does happen?

What if you do get sick?

What's going to happen?

Well,

You're either going to be laid out for a while and you know,

You do what it takes to get better or you don't settle with that.

Relax with that.

You know,

Fear doesn't help it.

Fear lowers our immune system.

Fear makes us more susceptible to this.

And what everybody is doing is getting caught up in the fear,

Lowering their immune systems to make it easier to catch.

That's the that's the first thing that we're doing wrong is we're making ourselves susceptible to catching this thing by lit by just panicking and living in a state of constant fear,

Lowering our immune systems.

So so like if we can just start by distancing ourselves from that and just making.

OK,

Well,

If this happens,

I'll do this.

You know,

Every single person I know on the planet has been through some serious crap in their life.

Everyone.

And some people's crap is more serious than other people's crap.

But when you're going through your patch of crap,

It's pretty bad.

Like when you're when you're four and somebody steals your crayon.

That's that's like mind blowing.

You could go into a complete fit when you're 15 years old and your girlfriend dumps you.

That can shatter your world.

When you're 42 and you lose your job,

That can shatter your world.

But it's all in perspective to where you are in your life.

You know,

The emotions we go through are actually very similar.

So if we can take a step back and learn to to deal with the you know what's happening without getting caught up in the fear of it.

This is an opportunity for us to do that.

This is an opportunity for us to really.

If you can find the larger personal growth you have is directly proportionate to the lesson that you learn.

And the extremity of the situation.

So like I was suicidal near death and alcoholic and all this stuff.

And my life was completely bankrupt in every possible way.

But when I so when I transcended that it was very dramatic because it was a real crappy situation,

You know.

So this is a big noisy situation.

So if you do the work,

If you take this opportunity to do the work and connect to your piece now here in this environment.

After this,

You're going to be so much more capable.

You're going to get knocked around so much less.

Then you did before because your growth is going to be tremendous because you use this opportunity.

It's not what happens to us in life.

It's how we react to what happens to us in life.

So if we use this situation to expand our fear and become more fearful.

Guess what we're going to be six weeks,

Two years from now.

We're going to be more fearful if we use this as an opportunity to learn to lower our fear,

Connect with our self love and take appropriate actions out of self love and love for others.

Instead of fear,

We're going to be functioning with life a lot better after this.

And,

You know,

I think that to sort of slow things down as an aspect of slowing things down.

Last night,

We had a movie night at my house.

And we'll actually get to this in a second.

But as part of the ending that we're going to do,

But Disney released Frozen 2 early on Disney Plus for everybody.

Like months,

Months ahead of time or whatever.

So we all watched Frozen 2 and I hadn't seen it before.

But I had heard about this part in the song.

And there's a huge aspect to the show,

To the movie about do the next right thing.

And I think that that is where we all are right now.

The world has changed so much in the last four days that we don't know what tomorrow is necessarily going to be like.

And we don't know what we really nobody knows what a month from now is going to look like.

So whatever is in front of you,

Like for you personally,

For your own health,

For your own well-being,

For your own mental health,

Find the next right thing for you to do and then do it.

Right.

And it can be for you.

It can be for other people.

It can be,

You know,

I see I see friends posting about how they're taking this opportunity to spend time as a family and get closer and do things.

And if that's your perspective,

That's what's going to happen.

And if you take this time to scare the living snot out of everybody in your household and to run around,

You know,

Moaning and wailing and being complete fear for the next two to four weeks or whatever it is like,

That's what's going to happen.

Like what you know,

How is one better than another?

It's you know,

This is kind of back to the immune system and the fear aspect.

Fear doesn't help.

Like it doesn't make you more.

It doesn't make you healthier.

It actually makes you less healthy.

It doesn't make you like fix situations better.

When you're in fear,

What happens is your brain starts shutting down.

So you think less clearly because your body is trying to push you in fight or flight.

So it's literally you literally think less clearly.

Your brain is getting less blood flow.

You're trying.

It's trying not to have you think.

So it doesn't want you doing a math problem when a tiger is chasing you.

It doesn't want you to get caught up in thinking.

It wants you to get caught up in action when there's an emergency,

When you're in fear.

So we have as long as we're in fear,

We're thinking less clearly.

Again,

Hence the toilet paper.

So you're not thinking clearly.

You're just reacting unconsciously to things.

When you relax away from the fear,

Then all of a sudden you think clearly.

You go,

Geez,

What would be appropriate for me to do?

Oh,

I'll do this.

I'll do that.

Like you actually are more capable of taking care of yourself and those around you when you're relaxed and you're thinking clearly.

So the fear takes that away from you.

So it's fear literally not only does it not have any benefit,

It has tons of detriment.

Yeah.

Calmness and love has no detriment and lots of benefits.

So what do you want the energy in your house to be?

What do you want the energy in your body to be during this time?

Do you want it to be filled with fear or do you want to be filled with love?

And that's the choice.

It always comes down to that.

It always comes down to a choice between love and fear.

And if we choose love,

We could actually expand as a community from this.

And we're already starting to see it.

My friend Heidi from Rhode Island posted something and there's tons of these things going out there.

But Comcast offering two free months of Internet to people who need it for school and work.

Disneyland donating unused food to local families.

Mark Cuban setting up funds to pay furlough to arena workers.

Washington Capitals owner paying arena employees.

Basketball players paying wages of people in the places.

Zoom CEO offering free use of resources to schools.

People offering to do grocery shopping.

Metropolitan Opera live streaming.

The Boston Bruins paying wages for people.

You know,

Like look for the heroes.

That's what we always say.

Look for the heroes in the situation.

There are this is that's what it looks like when people turn away from the fear.

Calm down.

Start using their brain to try to figure out how to help their communities and others that are being affected by this.

Because it's you know,

It's way bigger than the virus.

This is financial crisis to a lot of businesses.

You know,

I'm seeing things like the food delivery services going.

Hey,

We'll deliver your food with no contact.

Here's the instructions on how to do that.

You know,

People telling you support your local businesses,

Even if you don't want to eat there.

Go pick something up.

And you know,

Like just do you know,

People are starting to fall into the hero.

We're starting to bond as a community and start.

We're starting to look for solutions now.

And it's it's only because the hysteria is people are turning away from it and we're starting to look for solution and and how to love one another.

I hope that that continues.

And I believe it will.

Oh,

Yeah.

There's the result of this,

Though there will be a lot of pain and a lot of terrible things about this for sure.

There could be a massive beautiful result from this.

You say always that pain pushes until the pleasure pulls and the pain and the hysteria that started and is still very real in all of this is starting to turn like you said into people understanding the role of the hero and figuring out what they can do to help.

And hopefully,

The things that come out of this that are benefits that are innovations that are kind gestures.

Hopefully those things continue to grow.

And once somebody does them and sees that they work and see that,

You know,

It was really important.

Hopefully those things multiply and and grow.

Right.

Yeah.

Continue after.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

You know,

It's we change when we need to.

And yeah,

You know,

The pain does push until the pleasure pulls and the people who,

You know,

It doesn't mean just because you're in good space and you're feeling love and you're helping other people doesn't mean that you don't care.

You know that's a subconscious thing if like if you if you start talking about love and peace the people who are wrapped up in fear just start automatically trying to tear you down and go you don't care you just don't care about anything.

No that's not that's not that's not true.

It's actually I'm doing more because I care than you are doing over there complaining sitting in the fear.

So it's the people who are capable of opening up to the love are opening up to the love and the more of us that do that the more that's going to expand fear is energy that expands when we put our attention to it.

But so is love.

So,

You know the the more people that we can get out of fear and into love the bigger the ball of love that comes out of this is going to happen.

And who knows I mean when you're talking about love that that's the healing agent for all like you know we could solve like if if if if this was the thing like everybody's looking at it going is this going to be the thing that kills us.

No,

What if this is the thing that saves us.

What if this gets so bad.

That is so much pain that we have no other choice but to turn to love.

What if it gets so great that people just go I can't live like this and fear anymore and everybody turns to love or gigantic portions of people that could be the very thing that saves us in this world and gets us really transcending world problems and starts acting like a loving community of fellow human beings.

This could be the savior of our life.

You know of our of our globe.

You know so like if we start it's it's again it's not what happens it's it's how we react to what happens reacting from fear just spreads fear and negativity and doesn't solve things spreading opening to love.

And becoming creative and looking for solutions and caring for one another does that that does solve things.

So let's turn towards the love.

If you're interested in other resources from Glenn on this there are some great podcasts about fear in general,

And hope in general and the one that just came out this past Sunday actually was about building your spiritual spine and standing in your truth.

There's a lot of.

I mean,

In a way,

Like,

So we've done officially 160 episodes that have been released as of as of Sunday.

And I would say it like 120 of them probably would be helpful right now.

Probably.

So,

Yeah,

So check them all out but yeah it's isn't it serendipitous that it's you know we talked about spiritual spine and that was one of the first things I talked about today is like you got.

You know,

If you're going to live a spiritual life that comes a time where you need to draw a line in the sand and go I'm going,

I'm going to live this way.

I'm going to interact with life through spiritual concepts or I'm not.

And you have to stand in it even when it gets windy and noisy and there's a storm blowing around and find the peace in the middle.

And that's really having spiritual spine and I think that with how noisy this is.

I think it's a perfect time for us to really lean in and stand,

You know,

And stand and have some spiritual spine and really stand and what we say our beliefs are we can say our beliefs or something all day long,

But until we stand in them that they don't become part of us.

So we actually have to stand in it and now is the time to do so.

I couldn't agree more.

Is there anything else you want to say.

I don't think so.

You know,

There's if you if you're stuck at home and you need some positive mindset resources consistently.

We've got the podcast the blogs that you know it just go check out my website.

You know,

It's my book,

You know,

Like I've got tons of free content out there that you can access during this time to keep giving yourself use this time to feed yourself spiritually use this time to grow spiritually to connect with that love.

And,

You know,

Of course my stuff is a great way to do that and there's all kinds of free stuff out there.

So check it out,

You know,

Take some insight timer.

I'm going to give them a plug,

You know,

They're a great app and it's very minimal cost and they have like tons of courses that you can take right on your phone that are like 10 part courses.

Now is a great time to take one of those courses.

I don't have a course up but there's lots of great teachers on there that do and they can touch on all kinds of subjects.

So,

You know,

Take this time to work on your spirituality and stand in it and find that piece that you're looking for.

Now is a perfect time to focus on that.

So I think that's it for now.

Awesome.

Thanks,

Glenn.

Thanks,

Ben.

And thanks everybody for listening.

We'll talk with you soon.

Glenn is available for life coaching sessions.

To book an appointment or for more information,

Go to glenandbrose.

Com,

Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or click the link in the description of this episode.

Reviews

The message is so on point and so necessary for this difficult time in our history. Turning away from fear and towards love is something we all need to work on right now. Thank you for this inspiring podcast! ❤️

Really supportive. Thank you Glenn and Ben. It was strengthening. You know the bit when you mentioned stressing about whether you can find the broccoli at the store?? I was literally cutting up some broccoli at the time! I guess I'm on the right path! 😂 Take care!

This was really fantastic! So many gems that I will have to listen again to cite them. Thank you!

Excellent and calming. Thank you.

Thank you so much guys 🙏🏼 I’ve found it really hard to watch so many people I know run around in this terrible state of panic. I’ll be sure to share this and try to spread some peace and love 💖

THANK YOU so much for this awesome podcast! Everyone could truly benefit from these truths right now. Anxiety and dread are consuming the thoughts of so many people at this time. We need to just stop and fill our minds with hope and peace. GOD is in control!!!

I refuse to live in fear but will remain in faith and prayer that this too shall pass.

Blessings to you and yours.

Fantastic. Thank you. Share, share,share!

Such a TREASURE TROVE of. WISE INSIGHT, Encouragement,Inspiration and PracticalTools to use during this challenging time for humanity❣️
LOVE your comment, Glenn, on how we “Ask the questions but never slow down long enough to answer them.” Very HELPFUL Food for Thought”.
Thanks again for your Wonderful Encouragement. 🙏🏻💕

A lot of valuable points made! Hoarding is a huge problem around here too. From toilet paper to cat litter. It's ridiculous. I'm having a difficult time getting food for my animals. They're not going to understand why I'm running out of food. The dogs I can feed people food sparingly but I can't feed that to my horses. One major disconcerting thing is the fact that gun shops are selling guns at a rate of 10,000 an hour and running out of ammunition. Are we going to start shooting each other now? No wonder everyone is scared. Some have a reason and your right, others are just going overboard. Thank you!

This is spot on, thank you! Everyone needs to hear this 🙏🏽

Thank you, Glenn. Spiritual backbone. INot so easy to keep grounded and at the same time up to date on social media, so the isolation is a necessity for me right now quite a bit of the time. Sending much love to you.

WOW! This is all beautifully said🙏🏼I’d love to share it with all my yoga students. We aren’t able to do yoga together right now but I text, call or email them every day. This is exactly what I’d like to say to them. Thank you sooo much👍🏻 BTW, the toilet paper “thing” started with Johnny Carson in one of him monologues!?! I remember my grandmother having an entire closet full of TP😂 Namaste

Excellent for the times. Just what I needed to hear. Thank you!

Thank you very much

Really helpful, I was having a wobbly morning, and this has set me back on track... Slowed right down and feel much calmer. Thanks again for everything you do. Love and blessings 💙x

Thank you so much. I needed to hear these words again. Thanks 🙏🏼

Thank you for your sense of sound reason. I truly appreciate it and couldn’t agree more.