Countering the Contagion

We’re about to enter the fourth week of community quarantine. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been finding it harder and harder to get up in the morning. I still beat my alarm ahead of its 4:30 am bleat, but I lie in bed for hours on end before starting my day altogether.

Some routines are getting harder to live by. I’ve been putting off doing any kind work — professional or otherwise — until late morning to near lunch, or sometimes even near the early evening. On occasion, I’ve put off work I had planned for a certain time to another day. It’s a mess.

I chalked it up to the fact that the past few weeks haven’t been the usual. I was probably getting a bit depressed over everything. Maybe I’m emotionally drained. Then I read a blog entry of Seth Godin where he talks about how panic loves company. He says –

If you’re on a crowded plane and one person is freaking out about turbulence, the panic will eventually peter out. If, on the other hand, six people are freaking out, it’s entirely possible that it will spread and overtake the rest of the plane. Panic needs multiple nodes to spread.

I realized that while I’ve been trying my best to keep calm these past few days, my tranquil resolve was not nearly as effective at spreading itself as the panic emanating from the virus, the news of its spread, and how the government has been successfully mishandling the situation. Godin’s advice?

We have to expend effort to create environments of calm, because calm has a coefficient that can’t compete with panic when it comes to spreading.

If you’re on the same boat, here are some of the ways that I think we can amp up and dampen negative emotional contagion to hopefully make ourselves feel a bit less frantic as we enter this critical week of the pandemic –

Let go of the need to control. It’s an illusion. Obsessively tracking the news or brooding on it constantly offer an illusion of control. But they’re just that — an illusion. When we acknowledge that the spread of the virus is beyond our control, we let go of the subconscious need to manage the flow of events, and we feel a bit more at peace.

Cut down on the fear. Social media or conversations with friends who do more speculating and sensationalizing than sharing factual data should go out the window. While we still need information, it’s best to be wise about our sources. Heed the advise of experts — but no more than they tell us, lest we again intensify the negative emotions we’re trying to stay away from.

Be here now. Yesterday, there were fewer incidents of cases compared to the last few weeks, but I bet you didn’t realize that because we want it all to end. I want it to be all over. But that’s the future. Not being in the moment intensifies the crisis. Let’s instead focus on what actually does exist – this moment. In spite of the chaos out there, here, right now, there is also calm.

Stemming negative emotional contagion and making positive emotions more infectious will make each of us feel more in touch and composed during this frightening period. Reducing negative and reinforcing positive emotional contagion will help us weather this very unpredictable storm together.