Thriving Tips for COVID Times -- TRANSCRIPTION

Karen: Hi, Rebecca, how are you today?

Rebecca: I am hot! It's warm here!

Karen: It is toasty, although I'm outside, there's a nice, beautiful breeze. I'm enjoying that, sitting in the shade.

Rebecca: That's lovely. Well, I will confess for the last day and a half practically, I have been walking around at my apartment in just lingerie because it's so warm and the breeze feels so good on my skin with all of my windows open and the summer coming in.

It's really quite lovely, actually.

Karen: That sounds amazing. Oh my gosh. It just feels good on your skin in general too.

Rebecca: Lingerie!? Oh

Karen: yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca: Especially the stuff that I have. I found this lingerie place in Fremont called Bellafleur. I love them. They have so much good stuff. Lots of great European lingerie, French and British lingerie and everything I have from there I wear to pieces because it's so comfortable and so cute and fits me so well!

Karen: Uh, I love it. So cool.

Rebecca: Yay.

Karen: Well, would you like to talk about our topic for the day for our weekly AMA ask me anything.

Rebecca: I would be happy to. Do you want to introduce it?

Karen: Yes, I do. So this week, our topic, and I'm always so excited to hear your thoughts this week , Rebecca is going to talk to us about fighting fear with creativity and where to summon the courage. And I think that that is something that can be so useful for all of us to know.

Rebecca: Yay. I kind of want to make this one a little bit interactive because there's been a lot on my mind about this one there's, there's quite a few ways facing fear or fighting fear, I suppose.

My favorite right now is with creativity because I feel like fear is always something that's showing me something that's important to my life. And so when I can take the message that I'm getting from fear and turn it into a solution, that's helping me get past the problem in a way that is new and interesting and exciting, then I'm getting multiple benefits. I'm not only moving past the fear and going through it, but I'm also creating something new in my life that's giving me some excitement and incentive to move forward.

Karen: Nice. That sounds awesome.

Rebecca: Yeah. So

Karen: Hmm,

Rebecca: how and where to some of the courage.

So for me, uh, I've been finding during this whole time of COVID, there's been a lot of residual fear in the world that I've been playing with and realizing there's some really cool things I can do for myself. That allows me to take the such as of the fear and turn it into a beautiful fulfilled life somehow.

1. Find someone to cuddle withAnd one of the ways is to find someone to cuddle with like this isn't big thing, especially for people like me who live alone, finding someone to cuddle with and making agreements that you can cuddle and feel, you know, happy and safe and calm and be touched. Oh, my God. That is a beautiful thing. It's an eyeopening thing to be able to just be with another person and have a lot of touch, especially right now.

1a. Everyone should be the little spoon sometimes

So yeah, finding someone to cuddle with, and then the other piece of that is let them be the little spoons sometimes too. There's something so beautiful and fear neutralizing about nourishing someone else physically. Just holding them and letting them be held.

And this is true, even when there's a huge size difference in the people who are cuddling, I've found. So. If you're tiny and your partner's huge, that's okay. Cuddle them anyway. Let them be a little spoon. It feels good.

I learned this from a friend of mine years ago and he was so sweet the way he told me how important it is for him to be cuddled and , ever since I have ended up spooning my partners on a regular basis and it makes a big difference.

It makes a big difference for both of us. So there we go. There's my number one tip right now.

Karen: I love it. It's such a good tip for sure. And I actually recently got to experience this where I had a friend come over, literally just to cuddle, like the purpose of hanging out was to cuddle and I didn't know how much I was missing touch until I got it.

And then I got a little emotional, I felt so, so loved and appreciated. And. Yeah, just, it was really self nourishing. It felt so good.

Rebecca: If you want to cuddle date, let me know.

Karen: Okay. That sounds good. I have a really big bed. We could cuddle and sprawl and spoon one another.

1b. SeksbuddyRebecca: It's funny. I actually think this was a colleague of mine, who was telling me that Norway has officially come out with recommendations for their populace to find a sex buddy during COVID find somebody that you can negotiate and have sex with, just so that you're not completely not being able to get those needs met. I thought that's really cool that the government of entire country has decided this is important enough to do tell the people we want you to stay healthy.

Go find a sex buddy.

Karen: That is amazing. That's truly amazing.

Rebecca: Yeah. I Norweigans are pretty cool. I hope it is no way now, now I'm

somebody's going double check. Okay.

2. Look for ways to inspire yourself on a regular basis

So then my second tip that I've learned is to find ways to inspire myself. Like when I'm messy. Yeah. Find a ways to inspire myself. So look for inspiration. If for me, if I'm looking for whatever media I'm consuming through the lens of, is this going to inspire me today in some way?

Then I make much different choices about what I consume and it has a very different effect on me. So that's my key question, you know, is this inspiring me or is this not? Is this downstream or upstream? Is this a light and joyful or is this heavy and not so fun?

And it's not that I don't want any of my life to be heavy.

It's that I want the majority of my life and the things that I actually. Can do something about, can care about to be light so that I have the time and the energy and the fuel to pick up the heavy stuff and to lift it gracefully.

Karen: That's such a great point too. I like that because there is some heavy stuff. It, it exists and it happens. And to be able to have the, the head space, the mental space and the physical space to be able to. Move through that with grace and ease such a good idea to be really intentional about that.

2a. TEDTalksRebecca: Yeah. Thanks. It's been really helpful for me and for me, like Ted talks are super inspiring. There's all kinds of movies and articles and books that are super inspiring for me. Uh, just just know. Where to go and where to look for, for the things that excite you. That's such a great self care tip.

2b. Put your own teacher's voice on defaultKaren: Yeah. I've found if I'm ever just feeling like, I don't know what to do. I just turn on some Abraham Hicks, YouTube, and I just let them play in the background. Oftentimes I don't even

Rebecca: pay attention to it,

Karen: but that after like 30 minutes, I just feel better already. It's amazing.

Rebecca: Yes. I know two, so many times.

Oh, that's so good. Maybe that's what we'll do this afternoon.

3. Make some new friendsUh, okay. So my third tip is make some new friends and I figured out that a lot of my social world has been disrupted. And I think that's a pretty common thing right now with COVID coming around and poly QLS and Penn, Demaculon having to find their new footing and their new balance.

So I decided to make some intentional. Moves to go out and make friends. Yeah. With new people that are in similar places as I am now. So we can connect and listen to each other and talk and share. And be there. So , there's all kinds of cool places for doing that right now. A lot of the places that you wouldn't think are open, have gone digital somehow.

So if you're missing doing something from pre COVID, you might go and check and see if they have figured out a way to move online. Uh, also I love internet forums for connecting me with people that are similar to me. And even if it's just one or two new friends that you find, having other people that have this in common with you and going through this experience together, this global experience is probably going to bring you pretty close.

So I say, find some new friends like I'm doing and see, see what extra kind of pleasure that has into your life.

Karen: That's awesome. this was so fascinating to me. Just a few days ago, literally I saw , a zoom dance competition. So there was a person who is in charge and then they would call out these specific numbers.

And the numbers were either couples and sometimes it was a single person, but they put up like, 5 or 6 different screens at a time. And they would compete through zoom and give scores. And it was fascinating that they came up with that.

Rebecca: That is so cool.

What a fun way of spending some time. I mean, watching real people, doing interesting and fun things on zoom.

well, I guess it's, it is fun and interesting now it wouldn't have been my priority a couple of months ago, but now it is,  yeah, actually I've noticed that there's quite a few things that are happening online that normally wouldn't be happening when everything is closed down.

For instance, there's another podcast conference that I'm going to be attending coming up. It was going to be. Wait, I don't know. What's it going to be in person anyway, now it's entirely online. It's two days of podcasting stuff online and there was a publicity event that was going to be online or that was going to live.

That is, that would be online. And so it's making me think about the possibility of like retreats and women's workshops and things like that for us, because wouldn't that be cool, but it'd be neat for us to be able to take. More of our community and connect to them in ways that they're excited to be connected with other people.

Karen: Yes. So fun. And to have like international events where maybe even some of it is in person and some of it is online. Connecting digitally.

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly. That's another lovely thing about this. A lot of the people in the podcast group are from all over the world. I think there's someone in there from New Zealand.

It was way, way late for him to be showing up, but it's been really nice. so in the publicity group, yeah. I'm part of, there are women from, Germany, on the East coast and California, me in Seattle. So we have quite a variety of places and spaces and times, and opportunities.  we're getting to meet and to connect and to be really close with each other, just because of COVID, just because we were doing weekly zoom calls. If COVID wasn't happening, I don't think all of us would be able to do this or would it be wanting to do this. So here we are getting to be closer and more connected than, than usual.

4. Reach out for professional help, training and personal developmentAnd that actually leads to my fourth tip, reach out for more professional help. So for me, I started looking at resources I hadn't used before, and that was, you know, the mastermind group, actually. I knew it was there and it's something that I thought would be very cool, but I had not actually reached out and tried to do anything with it.

But now. I was looking for more professional resources, realized that this would actually be a really good thing. I found the right vibe and the right chemistry and yeah, man, I'm really looking forward to spending the next year with these ladies kicking ass in our businesses and taking things further.

So, I don't know where you are or whoever else is on this call, but looking for what more do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to take your hobbies, your passions, your career, and then seeing, okay. How can I reach out and get some of that too?

This is a time of a lot of things changing globally might as well find the place in the world that you want to fit into.

Find your slot and your niche.

Yeah, that's awesome. And there's so many resources available right now, ones that maybe would not have been a possibility because there are so many things online. So it's like, it's different and there's adaptation for it, but it's actually truly quite beneficial. Cause there's just like more... more possibilities now.

So much. Okay. And then this is my, my last one.

5. Look at the Brutal Facts, and then look at your actual resourcesThe fifth tip is to look at the brutal facts and then look at your resources. And we did a podcast episode about this a few months ago, the brutal facts. We called it that, and it scared everybody off. Nobody wanted to listen to it because they were afraid it would be upsetting, but it's not! We renamed it to "there's always a silver lining" and the concept still remains the same, you know, look at what's actually going on for you. What's changing in your world. Don't paint over it. Don't put a happy face sticker over your gas gauge. Do you want to know when your gas gauge is almost empty so that you can put more gas in your car? So look at the brutal facts and then realize that you also have all of these resources and talents and skills to draw from.

So as things are shifting and changing, knowing what you have in your tool belt, so to speak, you know, whether it's being a badass podcast editor, or, you know, you have some marketing or sales skills, maybe what you really love to do is just be outside all the time. And you're really strong and like to move things, it doesn't really matter, but make a list of what those are, because when you can look at new opportunities in the light of what your talents and skills are, what comes from within you and that you want to give to the world, now you're looking for a match instead of looking for a hand out. Now you're looking for a connection and someplace where you can add, and that is a valuable mindset to be having.

That's how you, the waves of change and enjoy it.

Karen: Love that always looking for the silver lining. There's always one there.

Rebecca: Definitely. Okay. I think that's all I have.

Karen: Well, thank you so much Rebecca! I so appreciate that. And just so many good, useful. Tips for us to be moving through the world.