Hey, everybody wanted to talk about something that’s also been on my mind kind of after my view yesterday, and that is that we are in the middle of a pandemic.

And I think we forget that sometimes. And I’m saying that because as I’m talking to clients, a lot of times I’m hearing and then when I hear myself and that is I can’t understand why everybody’s so stressed out and my kids are freaking out and I mean, my spouse are having conflict and all that stuff. And I finally occurred to me like maybe we actually need to say we are in the middle of a pandemic, OK? You are in the middle of a pandemic.

I’ve started to hear, like the experts are saying, like this is worse than the Great Recession. This is worse than the Great Depression. This situation is probably going to change our world more than World War Two. There’s never been a time in history when the entire world economy has been shut down for a day, let alone weeks. Right. So. That’s on a global scale, but even as I’m talking to my own kids, I’m realizing they’re feeling this stuff, they are internalizing this and feeling this and they can identify it.

And so they’re you know, they’re having behavioral problems. They’re fighting with each other. That stuff happens at counselors’ houses, too. And my wife and I are working to help them understand that they are just feeling what we’re feeling, right. That all of us are feeling this stuff together and that it’s normal to have conflict with each other. Nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing wrong with us. But we are all in the middle of a pandemic.

So when you are feeling depressed, when you’re feeling anxious, that’s normal. Everybody’s feeling that right now, right? When you’re feeling like things just are off. That’s because they are right. When you’re having problems in your relationships, that’s OK. You and your partner and everybody else in the world right now is freaking out. So I just want to say that because I think we all need to give ourselves permission to freak out a little bit, OK?

There’s not a person alive who has ever been through anything like this before. OK, so if that’s the truth, then it gives you permission to fail. It gives you permission to have conflict. It gives you permission to blow it. It’s OK. Just say you’re sorry and let’s keep doing this because none of us know how to do it. And so kind of following up on my video from yesterday. Right. We can use this as a as a license to be creative because we don’t have to succeed because we’re in the middle of a pandemic.

Right. We can be depressed because we’re in the middle of a pandemic. We can we can be at our wits end. Right. And all of us are in different situations. But I don’t think there’s a single person right now I know that I’ve talked to and probably not in the entire country, if not the world, who’s not feeling this on a very deep and visceral level. So give yourself permission to struggle right now. Give yourself permission to try things.

Give yourself permission to just do the best you can, because that’s all you got. That’s all any of us are doing. There’s no playbook for this. There’s no rulebook for this. So you just letting yourself feel your feelings, trying to be open about those, be aware of those. And then when you don’t get it right, you say you’re sorry and move on like just like the rest of us do. So hang in there, OK?

We everything’s changing every day. And we’re going to make it through this as individuals, I think, as as as a country, as a world. But it’s going to be it’s going to be tough and and we’re going to have to let ourselves not get it right every single time.