Our days this past year have been largely reactive.

Every week is a new announcement, news story or information piece that keeps us glued to the doom scrolling of news sites and social media feeds. From my end, all we’ve ever felt like we could do is hang on and anticipate what’s going to happen next.

Except… when you look at history… this particular situation isn’t anything new.

Ryan Holiday wrote a great piece on finding stillness during these times. One section (“Zoom Out”) spoke of how all this has happened before and will happen again. All you need to do is change the names and suddenly, you are at a different point in history. It’s reassuring to know we’ve dealt with all of this before and even at this magnitude.

So what can we do now?

Take control of our days again.

Be safe and decide what you’re going to focus on and what you’re going to ignore.

Stay informed, sure, but do so in the smallest doses. Just enough to know what’s happening, but not enough to lose yourself in endless news cycles. Unless you’re a politician or viral lab researcher/technician/worker, much of what’s happening is out of your control anyway.

Keep in mind all things will cycle and we will look at this as another entry in our history books.