Many of my plans have been modified, cancelled or postponed during the past few weeks and it has been very tiring for me to keep up. It sucks that we can’t control certain things. It sucks that things don’t go as planned.

I was constantly worrying, overthinking, overwhelmed, stuck in indecision, and fearful of the uncertainty. It got exhausting pretty quickly for me.

Then, I decided to reframe my thoughts. I realised that we can still control other things like our thoughts and the physical spaces around us.

Instead of focusing on how you might be inconvenienced by this, you can choose to focus on what you get from this. For instance, I view it as an opportunity to do things differently. I view it as a learning journey to gain new experiences.

This saves me from a lot of unnecessary mental drama. I become more accountable for how I am feeling. It also helps when you look at your past for inspiration and evidence that you are capable of being flexible.

Ask yourself the following questions.

>> When have you done something you thought you couldn’t do?

>> When did you face a challenge you thought you couldn’t overcome but coped with in the end?

For example, for me, one of my school’s project presentation was originally scheduled to be a physical presentation. However, due to stricter social distancing measures, we had to conduct our presentation virtually. As it was changed on a short notice, my team and I scrabbled to find a way for our audience to still try our demo application. As the project manager, I felt anxious and frustrated for this sudden change in plans that we carefully crafted beforehand.

We decided to look for solutions, and fortunately, we found a software that could allow our audience to interact with our app virtually. Although our presentation faced technical difficulties due to this arrangement, our audience gave a lot of positive feedback and the rest of the presentation went smoothly as well.

As we concluded our presentation, I realised that I could’ve saved myself from all the mental drama because they didn’t matter. What mattered was reframing my thoughts and directing my energy to solve the problem. 

We are capable of adapting as we did go through something similar at some point in our lives before. We just have to ask ourselves the right questions and recall those times of difficulties.

It helped me when I repeated this out loud every day, and you can do it too, to remind yourself to continue showing up despite difficult circumstances:

If you are experiencing difficult times, just remember that you are guided, and everything will work out in the end. Trust in yourself to rise to the occasion.

We are all in this together.