In a time of uncertainty, for many of us it might feel impossible to find opportunity and a chance to thrive in the unknown but today you’ll learn some tangible tools to look for opportunity, reframe our mindsets about this pandemic and tools on processing our emotions – so that you can be thriving in quarantine.

Michelle Pierson Young works in the personal development arena as a presenter, teacher and coach. She is certified in several coaching programs. Since the pandemic started, she created a workshop called ‘Apocalypse Mastery.’ It’s designed to help us thrive during these uncertain times.

An Interesting Opportunity

During this podcast episode, Michelle talks about some major pandemic life lessons. She explained how the people who attended her Apocalypse Mastery workshop, expressed seeing an opportunity in what is happening in our nation right now.

While being respectful to those who are truly suffering because of COVID-19, Michelle’s clients have expressed feeling a push or a pull toward something that a national shutdown has helped them take action on.

“This feels like a doorway that we’re all walking through together and it’s scary as hell,” Michelle said of the group’s mindset during the virtual workshop.

Our Emotions as Fuel

When I asked Michelle how we can reframe this scary chaotic time into one of opportunity, she pointed out – they are not mutually exclusive.

We can look for opportunity and feel scared.

“This is scary. You get to be scared, but it’s also an opportunity,” she said.

Michelle explains emotions as fuel. Sadness fuels us to say goodbye. Anger is guiding us to say ‘something happened and I’m not okay with that.’ etc.

Michelle shared a hilarious story about coming home from vacation to find the coffee was gone. She ends up storming around her kitchen, banging this and that because she is angry that she couldn’t have her cup of coffee.

Her husband comes in and tells her she’s “overacting to a crazy extent.”

This is such a good story, but I want you to hear the rest from Michelle here. She explains how we mix up our emotions with our actions. Fastforward to 7:10 in the interview for the story.

Processing Emotion

Michelle is such a great storyteller. I also want to send you directly to the podcast episode for you to listen, line by line how to process your emotion.

She talks about how to identify your emotion, consider which thoughts are fueling that emotion, how to determine whether those thoughts are reasonable.

Once you get to your reasonable thoughts, she talks us through how to create a game plan to gain some control in the unknown and uncertainty.

Growth in the Unknown

You know how we all had those plans before Coronavirus decided to stop our lives? Reminds me a little bit of my birth plan – ha.

When I asked Michelle about how to find growth when all of our plans went out the window, she said the most profound thing —

“It’s not in spite of our plans going to the wayside that we’ll experience growth, but because of it.”

This hits my soul deeply.

And I think we all know this.

The growth is in the struggle. The growth is when things don’t go how we expected they would.

This is your opportunity.

Michelle talks about the Buddhist belief that all suffering is based on our attachment to things that aren’t meant for us. We will not be able to take those first steps toward growth, until we open our hand to release the plans we may still be holding tightly too. We can come back to those later. For now, ask yourself –  what is the new opportunity?

So Much More on the Podcast:

• ‘You’re old life was a running from the silence’ – how we are learning in the forced slowdown
• Dealing with anxiety
• Questions to ask during an anxiety attack
• How to drive the car of your life
• How we are warring something together

This is a time of a pandemic life change.

Get in contact with Michelle and her coaching programs online, on Instagram and Facebook.

Remember, you can listen to the Happiness in Progress podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, online, the Mail Tribune’s website, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Youtube — and you can even ask Siri or Alexa to “Play the Happiness in Progress podcast.”