Stay Centered Through the Challenging Times A Self-Care love note this week + pls share Wirth friends! You will be tested throughout your lifetime. Until now, however, most have never experienced a global shutdown. During this time, it’s important to have a better understanding of life itself and stay centered for your mental well-being. Everyone’s COVID-19 experience will be different. You will grieve different losses than those around you— How Are You Helping? The global population faces an awakening. What the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed is that, despite the fact that you are a unique individual in an individualistic culture, your life heavily relies on the actions of others.  This test of humanitarian change is a challenge that relies on people to cooperate as a group. It doesn't matter whether you're a health care worker, custodian, delivery driver, grocery store employee, teacher, or writer—you are being called upon to do your part in helping others.  Here are some ways you can rise to the challenge at hand:   Stay Home Unless you have no other choice, stay home. It's a tiny win and it helps save lives.    Care for Yourself Because you can't help others if you're depleted or not well, prioritize self-care. A few of my favorite practices on self-care: reading Tara Brach books -- like “Radical Acceptance".   Learn Something New You can learn to cook, spend time reading new books (and sharing them!), learn a new skill (how to shoot a camera, start a podcast, grow some fresh produce, cook a new ethnic meal, tend to a garden), check in on a friend, practice limiting news intake, and/or stay away from your screens.Learn a new language—there are dozens of online courses or books to study from. Learn about where people come from and where your lines of lineage are drawn. Read more books on history, culture, geography, and war. Reset Meditate, get to bed earlier, and commit to better and longer sleep (away from your phone). You'll feel a positive change. Consider What Matters  Money, power, beauty, and greed aren’t imperative to health and joy. And quite possibly, they were destroying you—environmentally, socially, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.  Cultivate Empathy Listen to others. How is another person's experience different from—and the same as—yours? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Cry When you need to do it, let yourself do it. No judgment. Release Start letting go of the things that do not serve you. When you hold on to things that are not meant for you, suffering results. Release anger, pain, suffering.  When this is all said and done, you will remember—and be remembered by—what you do to keep yourself and others safe and healthy. Use this opportunity wisely to rise to the challenge of practicing inner peace, helping others, and learn to accept what you can and can’t change.  Most Importantly: Volunteer Use this opportunity wisely. I've shared on my website, CandiceKumai.com, some organizations that could use support right now. This emergency is an opportunity to serve, whether through sweeping initiatives, petitions to be drawn, hands to feed  We can be grateful for all the years of freedom we have shared, and reflect upon it. A simple hike, a night out with your girlfriends in heels in New York City, a surf session in Encinitas, picking wildflowers in the mountains. I miss it all, and I know you do, too. Today, what we can do: we can practice inner peace, choose to help others, and we can learn to better accept what we can’t change. Wee can believe that this too shall pass.  Be present. Take action. Here’s how you CAN HELP.  NOTABLE PLACES TO DONATE + HELP NOW:  Support by buying my Books: Kintsugi Wellness  + 5 star rate the wabi sabi podcast  shop: amazon.com/shop/candicekumai thematchashoppe.com