Top 5 Life Lessons the COVID-19 Pandemic Taught Me

What has the COVID-19 Pandemic taught you? I promise you aren't alone in this. Together, we will explore multiple ways to work through grief!

In this week's episode, we are practicing our breathwork with a coherent breathing exercise. Breathwork is an awesome (and free) way to help reduce stress and anxiety! As more places start to open up around us, I know that can cause some serious stress as we get acclimated yet again to a new standard of living. This coherent breathing exercise will calm your mind for the moment so that you can think and process clearly.

After you've grounded yourself with the breathwork, the reflection of lessons learned in this past year of pandemic-style living begins! I figured what better way to reflect on this past year in quarantine than to come up with a list of things I learned about myself during this time. I have always been known to find a lesson out of everything, heck that's what this podcast is about, but there is so much to be said about this pandemic and all the mini-lessons there are to be learned. Join me as I talk you through the things I learned in this time.

DP the Unknown provides episode theme music titled "Here/If"

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Transcript

MaJhane
Hello, my babies welcome back to another episode it’s ya girl MaJhane AKA MamMaJ, my pronouns are she her, and you are listening to MamMaJ(ism)! Thank you for deciding to listen in on this talk of love and honest conversation so let's get into it. By the time you finish this episode, you will know the top five things I learned during the pandemic. The things I learned may be similar to yours or completely the opposite we've all had our own journey within this pandemic that led to some sort of discovery within ourselves or even about the world around us. This episode is me unpacking those things with you, so let's get it. I'm not saying that okay this is me saying that because over like now we're still in it completely but it's been a year can you believe it so okay let's start.

Top five things, number one the first thing that I learned in this pandemic is that time spent with self is so necessary. It is a thousand percent necessary. for those of you who know or remember the beginning of the pandemic was really hard for me because I was actually still dealing with and facing heartbreak and I had got out of a long-term relationship maybe a couple months prior so having to deal with that by myself because I was following the stay-at-home orders was just not the business. But it had to be done and its for the best honestly because as I've mentioned before I was definitely going down a dark hole where I was really just doing whatever to feel something and I like to think that it was kind of like divine intervention also the kind of just help me get back on the right track. And aside from that I was also trying to figure out how unemployment worked cause I never had to file for unemployment before even though my job put me on for a low so I was technically still a part of the company I just didn't have any shifts of course cuz we were closed for the time being so I was like what how am I supposed to pay bills like I'm not understanding so I had to figure out how to apply for unemployment. Pray that I got in the most amount that they offered and then have to get paid bi-weekly like I'm not you to that life. I'm usually my job I get paid weekly so I was like what is this what is going on. So trying to basically dealing with all of that, heartbreak, filing for unemployment, I also had to relearn how to love myself because being in that relationship I completely lost sight of that part that I needed to nurture because cultivating any type of relationship whether it's with yourself or with someone else you have it's a verb it's something that you actively have to continue to do and while I was in that relationship I was so focused on my partner that I was not I was not interested in providing that same love for myself which I feel like really shot me in the foot at the end of the day because then I had to have these moments where I was sitting at my house by myself for hours at a time trying to figure out what to do with my life other than cry and eat junk food right? So it was really important for me to spend that time with myself.

The second thing that I learned was the importance of taking a step back and essentially, metaphorically speaking, allowing light to come in. So I before pre pandemic I was working like crazy I was always at work seeing my co-workers every single day. Basically but they were my life, my job was my life and so because of that I started to have these feelings of resentment and jealousy toward my co-workers who clicked up and became super close because I wasn't a part of that and I started to feel slighted cause I'm like I've been here for years and I feel like nobody appreciates the me that I am at work but outside of work everybody loves me like everybody sees you know- do you see where I'm going with this? My ego was going a mile a minute talking and thinking about all the ways that I'm so amazing and great and how my co-workers don't see it and it's their loss but I'm still pissed about it, jealous about it, insecure about it, and like resin full about the situation. And it wasn't until this time in the pandemic where I had to be to myself why I just woke up and was like why did I care so much. I mean I get it I understand why I care so much because I was seeing these people everyday and I just felt like I was left out of the picture and it just didn't it just didn't feel good. And you know as humans we feel things then I understand why you felt that way but spending this time and like not being with him everyday it's kind of like an oh. like it I think it's anything it just showed me that I was putting too much of my time of motion and energy into things that in hindsight like I didn't not that it didn't matter but they didn't feed my soul in the way that it needed to. So if anything that should have just been an indicator for me to redirect my attention and my energy into things that fed me more spiritually, mentally, if that makes sense. So that was something that I learned and really just that that jealousy and resentment was based out of my ego. And I have been spending a lot of time working on not allowing my ego to win most of the battles that I have internally, right? And part of that is taking a step back in like reassessing the situation and asking myself at the end of the day, what really truly matters? Like who feeds my soul? What makes me feel good inside? Not just for the moment but for the long run you know and the pandemic is definitely helped to kind of highlight the answer to that question for myself.

The third lesson that I learned was that the retrograde, and these lessons that they're meant to teach you, for the longest time I had no idea what the retrograde even was about I still kind of don't really I just know the jokes on Twitter when they're like oh Mercury must be in Gatorade today or something cuz you know she's going sideways. But it wasn't until I came across this specific Tik Tok video, of course, and they were kind of explaining that retrograde is basically like when you're in school and you're sitting down and taking your final exam so when we're in retrograde we’re essentially the-essentially the universe is throwing lessons at us that we should have learned right so that's why exes come back into the picture or you feel like you're repeating the same thing over and over in your life why does this keep happening around the same time well it's because it's the universe trying to test to see if you really did learn your lesson. Cause of course could be like, “Oh I'm out of that toxic relationship I've learned my lesson,” but if so and so comes knocking on your door in 2 weeks are you really going to ignore that call or are you going to block that number because you know that at the end of the day it's not serving you in the way that you needed to be served. This is what the retrograde is about. At least this is how I understand Mercury retrograde to be about if I'm wrong please let me know but also please don't because it's it clicked for me and it made me realize like oh so this this game of life is really just like we're all in a classroom in the universe is just trying to teach us things all the time like which makes more sense to me so don't don't ruin this for me but also I kind of do want to know cuz I don't want to spread misinformation but I will say that that is how I now have come to understand what it means when they say when people say that we are in retrograde. And I know that is also not a time for you to start trying to set intentions and manifesting stuff just kind of like buckle up and prepare for the ride and once retrograde over then you can reassess and plan your manifestations and intentions accordingly.

The fourth lesson that I learned during this quarantine time is that it's okay to meet people where they're at. And I can be that can really translate into anything but for me one of those things is that in this pandemic I had actually seen a post recently where it was like, “oh this is now the time where you can see who was really there for you who checked up on you during the pandemic,” and all this other stuff it was like no! This pandemic was tough for a lot of people so for you to be like “oh if you didn't check on me during this time you ain't shitt you in a good friend” like we all have our lives that we live we all have so much s*** going on right now that it's really hard to try and keep track of all of the moving pieces. So that's not fair to your friends to say “oh you didn't care about me cuz you didn't like”-did you check on them and if you did and they didn't get back to you it's that could be another story but also again we're all working with different abilities here like some people are able to handle a lot of stress, high-level stress situations and still be able to get back to you, but others myself included just don't know how to balance it all. So sometimes I'll have people reach out to me and I'm like I we cannot deal right now I will get back to you later and then I might forget but that's not because I don't love you or care about you it's just because life, you know. It's just life. You got to let people do what they do and again that's honestly another thing of the ego. When you feel like you are the center of everybody else's Universe you can't be the main character to in everyone's life you can be the main character in your own life but you are not the main character in somebody else's life they are their own main character you got to let the main character okay. That's just your ego talking so keep your you in check and we'll be okay. But another way to look at this is also when meeting people where they're at in terms of like being “woke” I really wish there was another word for this because now when I hear the word work I'm just like I mean woke when I hear the word woke I'm just like over it but you have to remember that we all started somewhere some people have limited knowledge on certain things and you have to be patient enough to either provide them with that information or allow them to find it on their own but you can't be mad at somebody for not being where you are mentally, spiritually whatever the case may be. Because you have to remember that you had to get there at some point to somebody either showed you the way or you found it yourself but you can't expect it all will now that I know this piece of information everybody else should too and if they don't by now then they're doing it wrong or they suck like no meet people where they’re at. help them or something. And this is how I feel with the whole ego thing now that I’m hyper-aware of my ego when people tell me certain things I'm like in my head I'm like oh that's 1000% your ego, all you have to do is drop your ego. But I can't just like say that because a lot of people aren't where I'm at with this ego thing right now, right? So I have to find ways to kind of meet them where they're at because if I say it the way that I'm thinking it's just not going to make sense or it's not going to click or connect the audience the way that it needs to so many people where they're at and know your audience you got to know your audience in order to meet them where they're at just saying. 

And the last thing that I learned is that things will never be the same but that's kind of point and that's okay. Like once we are finally able to leave our houses and do things it's not going to look the same as pre-COVID so you should probably start setting your expectations up now because-or rearranging your expectations I should say. Because I know a lot of people who are like, “oh i can’t wait to do this that and the third,” and I’m like okay but remember that it’s probably not going to look and/or feel the same that it did before. It’s really hard to recreate a memory so just focus on creating new ones, you know? Working with what you got and going from there because sorry to tell you but it's-I can almost guarantee that it's not going to come out the same way that it did before it because that's just how life works. Have you ever tried to recreate a memory? That s*** damn near impossible. I remember I used to do that as a kid we would come up with a game and it's super fun and then we try to recreate it and it just doesn't hit the same like yeah that that's that's the same situation so just make sure that you're managing your expectations when you do eventually go back out into the world because it's not going to look the same and you have to kind of just roll with the punches just like we've been doing this whole entire time. So honestly nothing new. And yeah that's really all of those are the lessons that I learned during this pandemic time and I like to call the pandemic the panny so this is what I learned during the panny.

And as for the challenges I challenge all of you to really just reflects on some of the things that you learned in this year because a lot of us did not expect this to go past like a month or two right and here we are a year and some change later still going through it and honestly we're going to continue to go through it because once we-once they start dishing the vaccines out the more people are able to go out now we're going to have to deal with the after-effects of that right people are still they still going to be around just in a different light and it's not hopefully not going to be as bad as it was in this past year so there are a lot of expectations to be managed and there's a lot of patience to be had as well. So take all of that with a take all of that do what you want with it but I just really hope that you take the time to think about you know lessons you learn and be proud of yourself I'm proud of you I'm proud of me we survive a pandemic honestly us Millennials zillenials Gen Z whoever the hell else is alive like we've been through some s*** and we're still here kicking it make any word I am so proud and you should be too and you know it's going to take a whole lot to kill a bad b**** so I always wanted to say that I don't like to use the word b**** you so much for tuning and I will see y'all next week and so yeah bye.