Stress Management: Live and Let Live

As we all continue to adjust to the changing presentation of COVID and how it has an impact on our daily lives (especially now that there are variants weighing heavy on our minds), one of the things we can offer is to leave room for others to respond in the ways that feel safest for them, as well as to be patient and accepting of our own personal choices when it comes to mask wearing and socializing. 

Since the mask mandate was lowered, there has been a lot of anxiety among those that don't feel quite ready to stop wearing them or to discontinue practicing a more cautious lifestyle.  They also don't want to be pressured yet to be in office spaces, crowds, airports, or other places where larger groups of people gather.  Others who didn't want to wear the masks in the first place have been more than ready to stop wearing them and so their adjustment has come quite rapidly and without effort or much thought.

If you don't feel quite ready to completely stop wearing a mask or using social distancing and COVID protocol, do yourself a favor and be the first to accept this preference about yourself.  The last thing any of us needs right now is to stop listening to our own internal voice that has the right to choose what we believe is best for ourselves at any given moment.  There is no need to join any voice that chooses to condemn you for doing what you feel is safest for yourself, and you do not have to conform to anything others are choosing to do or not do in any given setting.

If you are someone that chooses to unmask now and take your freedom from the long enduring mandates of COVID restriction, let yourself enjoy that choice as well.  Enjoy the liberty at last to return to some form of normalcy.  What none of us needs right now, however, is for any part of either group preference to judge, condemn, shame or humiliate anyone of the other preference group.  We need to Live and Let Live!  Which simply means to live as you choose, and let others do the same.

The moment we stop listening to our own inner voice which tells us what our personal preferences are, is the moment we abandon ourselves and damage our own sense of internal self-trust.  Be sure to listen to your own personal truth on these growing changes as everyone continues to transition through the morphing landscape of COVID at their own preferred pace.  

Trust yourself, and let others trust their own good judgment and choice as well.  Just because your choices are different doesn't mean you are right or wrong.  It just means your view and choice differs from that of others.  Nothing more.  

Live and Let Live!  Let it become your internal motto as you work to heal through the ongoing COVID process.

Thanks to Fazingo Photos for the great picture