If Coronavirus news is making you negative, well stop exposing yourself to it!

Published on switzer.com.au on 6 April 2020.

If Coronavirus news isn’t making you positive, then stop reading it! Recently, I shared a line of local Coronavirus victim, Tom Hanks, and his movie Bridge of Spies. In the movie, Hanks asked someone was facing potential death: “Aren’t you worried?” And his great reply was: “Would it help?”

Worrying and being negative about the virus is relevant if you or a loved one is medically vulnerable. But if your challenge is the lifestyle imposition of all this, then maybe you need to work on your attitude. And I’m here to help.

Over the weekend, despite always starting by new deaths and death tolls, the news actually improved. New York’s daily death rate fell and the same went for Spain, France and Italy.

Friends of mine who live in Milan and are sick of being ‘imprisoned’ have been told that a release from lockdown might be as early as mid-May. One is an engineer and the other a geneticist, so they’re both intelligent realists and you have to hope they’re right!

The man who has come out of this crisis in the USA with a lot of respect, New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, thinks the infection curve will peak in New York and start turning down over the next two weeks. And that’s already happening here!

This conforms with the predictions of Chris Joye of Coolabah Capital Investments, who I’ve been talking to you about for the past three weeks. His research team also think the US will hit infection peaks by the last week in April.

This development has led the PM to tell us we’re moving into the “suppression phase”, which is code for ‘we won’t go back to normal too quickly in case we re-infect ourselves’. But it does give us hope that this will not be a six-month lockdown, as some very negative types believe.

In fact, the NRL is looking at a possible restart of its competition by June 1, which was something that was suggested to me by a first grade coach only yesterday, while I waited on a bread queue in Bronte that was over 100 metres long (because of its popularity and because of the 1.5 metre distancing rule that applies nowadays!).

Question: How does someone get so negative about how long this lockdown might last?

Answer: Too much time exposed to news, which is founded on the principle that “if it bleeds, it leads!”

Of course, we all want to know when we’ll get out of ‘jail’ and can go back to work and start watching footie and other sports again.

I hope you’re coping with these strange circumstances we all find ourselves in. One lady I know made me laugh when she said to me “it’s like being locked into an episode of the Twilight Zone.”

No one expected a pandemic of global proportions, let alone the closure of businesses and the national lockdown of employees.

And while this is all very stressful, I reckon you should try to use this time as a period where you personally recalibrate and get yourself ready for the time when we all get back to work.

And I think time is the critical issue you should think about because right now the virus and the Government have given you spare time at home that you would never have believed was possible!

So what can you do with that time?

One of the most inspirational guys I’ve ever worked with and interviewed is John Maxwell, who wrote the book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. He said a turning point in his life was when his mentor asked him: “John, what is your plan for self-improvement?”

And like most of us, he admitted he didn’t have one!

Now John’s book is one worth reading while you have time on your side right now. Creating a plan for self-improvement and actioning it over the weeks ahead before normalcy returns would be a great use of your time.

One of the big excuses we all have for not getting fit, losing weight, reading life-changing books and so on is “I haven’t got the time!”

Well, now you do. So I recommend you read about what government help is out there. The website Australia.gov.au is really useful and I’ve done a lot of work with the CBA’s website to help business owners find out about the assistance on offer.

The one thing we Aussies are great at doing is coming back from impossible circumstances to take the prize. Who can forget Kieran Perkins winning the 1500 at the Atlanta Olympics when he was in the outside lane with an outsider’s chance of winning?

(Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPmkYBLHpqw )

Use this challenging time to challenge yourself and go looking online or in books to find the improvement that will give you an enormous competitive edge when you get back to work.

I have always loved the advice from Jim Rohn who told us: “Don’t wish it was easier. Wish you were better!”

If you’re reading too much Coronavirus news that is making you negative, well stop, and go looking for people like me who’ll help you with your money goals. US leadership guru, Tony Robbins, will help you with your self-belief. And maybe check out your favourite sporting heroes or actors who’ve become world class performers, coming from nowhere but did it because they really wanted it.

To wrap up I’d like to share with you my favourite quote that comes from the great tennis player Chrissie Evert, who explained her extraordinary career in the following way: “There were times when deep down I wanted to win so badly I could actually will it to happen. I think most of my career was based on desire.”

Make the Coronavirus threat the time opportunity of your lifetime, so you can become a much better you!

And if you or your loved ones or friends need this kind of stuff daily, try going to www.switzer.com.au for good daily information. But if you’re reading this, you probably already do?

One last positive point. Until the Government’s JobKeeper programme was introduced, Westpac’s chief economist, Bill Evans, thought unemployment would be 17% by June but he cut it down to 9% after the payment plan was announced.

And the consensus of economists on what we’ll contract by over 2020 has come in at 4%, which is not a bad number when you consider we’re probably going to be closing down normal business for three months and it will probably take another three months to get people normal again!

If you need some positivity, I reckon Queen Elizabeth nailed it with her speech overnight, when she said: “While we have faced challenges before, this one is different. This time we join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal. We will succeed – and that success will belong to every one of us.”

Provided you don’t have a tragic medical threat, this Coronavirus challenge to your normal life could end up being the inspiration to you re-inventing yourself as a new and improved you, but as Chrissie would say, you need to want it “deep down”.

Well, do you?

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