My talk to the Family Law Division of the Florida Bar went great (if I do say so myself). I spoke about managing stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic. I received a lot of positive comments about my point that we are all, basically lol, “normal” people dealing with an abnormal and stressful situation. Stress affects the body and mind. It is normal during prolonged stressful situations to develop issues with sleeping (too much or too little), eating and drinking too much (to calm nerves), isolating and avoiding people, and feeling easily frustrated and anxious. So what you are going through is normal. And it’s normal for your family, friends, neighbor and co-worker.

Although we’ve been dealing with pandemic for several months now, it will still take more time to adjust to our new reality. But we can handle it. We’ve all been through stressful situations before – school, relationships, bereavement, etc. We will survive this situation as well, and maybe even learn something about ourselves and what’s really important to us.

In the meantime, in no particular order, here are some ideas that may make life a little bit easier to handle:

1. Cut yourself and others a break during this stressful time. If it’s not going to matter 15 minutes from now, it’s almost certainly not worth getting frustrated about now.

2. Keep as much of your regular routine as you can. Even if it’s just having your cup of coffee in the morning or doing the laundry, those mundane daily activities root us in our lives. Think how lucky you are to have a place to live, clean water to drink, your health, family, and friends.

3. If the day has been particularly rough, do something nice for someone else. Call someone who may be home alone, buy someone you care about flowers. Bringing a smile to someone’s face will usually bring a smile to yours as well.

If none of that helps, try watching reruns of the Three Stooges .. it always works for me!