Anger seems to be everywhere these days, leaking out of normally friendly and placid people. It can be seen in their impatience: with a driver who slows down, in looking for directions, or with another person whose misunderstood request is judged to be stupid and not worthy of a thoughtful reply.
Loneliness, already epidemic before 2020, has reached cataclysmic proportions, not only in people who are isolated, but also those who are in relationships that they now realize are not meeting their deepest needs, possibly the loneliest space of all. “How can I have gotten what I want and now I’m miserable?”
And I’m not just surveying the general pubic here. I’m talking about my circle, which includes coaches and therapists: the very people we rely on to be sturdy and reassuring.
Just when we need a confidante in whom we can confess the fears that wake us up, in despair, at 3 a.m., we discover that many of those people can’t take any more confessions of fear and anguish. They’re trying to protect themselves against the emotional storms.
If this sounds like your corner of the world, you’re clearly not alone. We are experiencing Stress on Steroids: climate extremes, political unrest, cultural upheaval, and, oh, yes, the virus.
As someone who studied stress management for over 45 years, I was flummoxed even before the pandemic, when in 2019 the World Health Organization declared that stress was a worldwide pandemic, costing billions of dollars and untold human misery. I already knew that what we were doing wasn’t working, and had turned my attention to trying to develop compassionate, collaborative leaders who might help to lessen the stress on those they led.
Interest in my views on leadership flew out the door on February 24, 2020, when I was launching my new book on the topic by addressing a group of initially very interested leaders and they began getting up and leaving the room. Turns out they’d gotten messages from headquarters: “Return to your home country immediately.” The pandemic had struck.
I was one of the many who had to find the resilience to go on, to create a new, and hopefully better, world.
My efforts took me to the study of what the newest science has to offer us, and the offerings are breathtaking in their power and the hope they can deliver.
Based on neuropsychology and quantum physics, techniques offered by the newest science assure us, with scientific certainty, that we humans are more powerful than we have ever been taught to believe: we can take charge of our despairing emotions and turn them into hopefulness, an attitude from which we can see all the possibilities that exist for us. We can easily, with the new brain science, recognize and get rid of the confining mindsets that have kept us prisoners of our own belief systems, and the belief system in which we are living. They can help us to develop our compassion, which in turn can surround us with a protective bubble that allows us to see clearly what is happening around us without being sucked into the negative energy. We can do this fairly quickly, in our own homes, in short periods of time that fit into our overly-busy schedules.
I have spent 2020 and 2021 studying and mastering these techniques, which I will be sharing with you in my articles. In late Fall 2021, I will start offering training programs. I will even be showing how you – yes, you as an individual – can contribute directly to world peace simply by contributing your peaceful energy.
I hope you will stick with me during the coming months and year. Just as a state fair ride can be either scary or exhilarating based on your beliefs, the coming ride into a new era can be thrilling and joyous.
I look forward to hearing how this has affected you and to working together to find solutions.
Let’s get ready for that ride together.
Lynette Crane is an internationally acclaimed speaker, trainer, coach, and author of The Confident Introvert and Quiet Brilliance: Solving Corporate America’s Leadership Crisis with Hiding in Plain Sight Talent.
She was a pioneer in stress management over 40 years ago, having created a college course and corporate training programs, for which she wrote the book. Over the past 40 years she has helped countless people manage their stress successfully.
Now she has amplified the power of her programs with certification as a trainer and coach/mentor from HeartMath Institute™, which has produced over 30 years of research, based on neuropsychology and quantum physics, on the power of the heart-brain connection in helping us manage the stress of our emotional lives effectively.
