Change is the heart beat of our lives. From the economic conjuncture to the changing day and night, life goes in waves, and once we survived a wave such as the Great Pandemic, we can prepare for the next one, and the next one. Not by being afraid, but by being resilient

At the beginning of Corona, I wrote ‘Be Calm. Be Resilient. This too shall pass.’ Covid-19 hasn’t passed yet, but some countries already lived through the worse part of it.

Precisely in these three words lays the secret of surviving a crisis as such.

Be calm.

Be calm to let your emotions get back on their feet; to let the dust of confusion and fear settle down; to gain a clear vision and understanding of what really is going on. Be calm to save energy, strength, and power; which you will need to pass through the actual storm. Be calm to reassure one another, panic does kill.

Moreover, be calm to take deliberate action. Assess the situation, the cause, the real problem, the potential solutions, the first actions to take, the following ones. Assess the information, the facts, the fictions, the gaps in the knowledge, the hypotheses. Assess your own situation, what is the real risk, how can you decrease it; what is the real consequence, how can you prepare for it?

Be resilient.

A crisis as Corona confronts us with the one thing most of us fear the most: incertitude. There are more questions than answers, and even the answers are vague. From one moment into another we fall in the big gap of the Big Unknown. Precisely here, we have to remain resilient.

Be resilient. Know what you can and cannot control. Know what you can and cannot change. Know what you can and cannot expect. Take control of that what you can. Change that what you can. Expect the worse, but hope for the best.

Be resilient. If you have taken the preparations you could, no more, no less; then remain calm and resilient. Brace for impact while focusing on living here and now. Focus on breathing when you feel like it’s all lost and you lose control. Bring your mind and body back to the present, know you are prepared the best as you could, which might not be the best preparation of the century, but it is the best you could with the knowledge and means you had at that moment.

Be resilient. Focus on the good, while not ignoring the bad and the ugly. Focus on gratitude for what is left, not on pity for what is gone. Focus on your thoughts and emotions, let them be, don’t ignore them, but give them space and time to heal. Set them free, that will set you free.

This too shall pass.

When being calm and resilient, know the storm will come, sweep you off your feet, and leave you feel devastated, regardless how good you were prepared. Don’t fear or despair, because this is all part of it. You are ready, you were calm and resilient, thrust on your own preparedness. It might not look that way, it might not feel that way, but you are more resilient than you think.

Once the storm has set in, hold on. Hold on to your beliefs, your values, and the knowledge you gathered by being calm and resilient in the first place. Hold on to gratitude and love for yourself, for your loved ones, for life as such.

Hold on, have faith. This too shall pass.

Covid came, it made a mess, but eventually it will pass. Leaving a mess behind, but at least a mess we owe; a mess we can give meaning to, and walk out; a mess we can learn lessons off and use for a better future. A mess that showed us the cracks of the system, as well as of our own lives. A mess that showed us how it can all be different from day to day.

A mess that showed us how everything is change, but how we can overcome by being calm, and resilient, and having faith that this too shall pass.

This article is part of the series of Hope in Times of Corona. Read

1. How this too shall pass
2. how this times of self-isolation should not mean loneliness,
3. how you can contribute to this battle,
4. how gratitude lights up the dark,  
5. how united we will stand strong
6. on the most util strategy in awake of a crisis
7. how I got blown of my feet as well, but caught by many caring hands,
8. how being calm can get us through the storm.
9. about Love in Times of Corona
10. how to discover your own talents
11. why we need stories to hold on to
12. how you can be creative and innovative.
13. how to spend your mot valuable assets in times of Corona.
14. how to listen to the sound of silence.
15. How breath taking Corona really is.
16. discover the other freedoms Corona has shown us,
17. about the new-born freedom Corona gave us.
18. about another way to exceed your personal bubble.
19. about the position of nature in this entire story
20. about nature bouncing back
21. about the crucial choice between resilience and resistance
22. about the game to play
23. about star gazing in dark times
24. About looking for Meaning
25. About how Music Connects
26. about what Easter and Corona have in Common
27. About the Shark and the Turtle
28. About the Irony of Distance
29. Why to Hold on
30. Fake News
31. about The Big Unknown we live at
32. about Feeling Alive
33. About turning obstacles into opportunities
34. about what the Birthday of my nephew learned me about life 
35. About where we should go from here?
36. About coping with incertitude
37. About the Great War and the Great Pandemic, and we should not forget
38. about history’s most important message, echoed by corona
39. How one country could rule them all
40. About how to prevent the next Green Pandemic 
41. about how we are experiencing a new episode of our history books
42. about when the poppy flowers
43. about what’s in a number
44. masks off, how a friend in need is a friend indeed
45. What’s Next. after we flattened the curve?
46. how will our personal story look like in a post-corona world?
47. why we should never let a good crisis go too waste.
48. How Spring can happen in Autumn
49. How to unlock the lockdown
50. Why education matters
51. How we can give meaning to the meaningless deaths. (rethink health care)
52. The remarkable marketability of health, or not?
53. the remarkable rewards of health
54. The queeste for global health care 
55. Health Heroes
56. Pains and Gains 
57. Solidarity 3.0
58. Work-Life Balance
59. Home sweet home
60. Real Connections
61. Leadership 3.0
62. gratitude 3.0
63. Respect 3.0
64. Humanity 3.0
65. Change Management
66. Economic Catharsis
67. To consume or not to consume?
68. Travel the world, travel your heart
69. Barrels of Life
70. People, no Number Management
71. Back to the Office?
72. Those jobs …
73. Economic Growth or Green Growth
74. Global trade, global fate
75. Act local, think global
76. A changed climate for Climate Change
77. Love is in the Air
78. From Fatamorgana to Oasis
79. From Covid-19 to Forest Fire
80. 5 Shades of Fossil Fuels
81. Water, divide and unite
82. Almighty Ocean
83. Plastic Free July
84. Thin Line of Change
85. The Story of Corona
86. The World Before Corona [recap]
87. The World During Corona [recap]
88. The World After Corona [recap]

Or wait until tomorrow, when I’ll shine another light on yet another positive corner of this dark time.