The following talk is reprinted with permission from Dr. Marissa Pei. You can see her in action on her award winning podcast here when she interviewed me.

Covid-19: An Opportunity for Our Lifetime

“I can’t wait for things to get back to normal.” And what was ‘normal’? And do I really want to go back to that?!

BC-19 Before Covid-19 Virus took us to our knees, “normal” looked like record levels of air pollution (did you see the beautiful picture of the Himalayas above the Taj Mahal visible for the first time in decades), 3 percent of the population with more money than the rest of the population, people who hated their jobs but were afraid to leave because the money was needed to pay for their big houses and fancy cars and vacations and wardrobes and everything to keep up with the Joneses aka the Kardashians, and a fascination with people whose only claim to fame was drama that they created to gain followers.

The abused were continuing to abuse their kids, leaving everyone open to the short term solution called crime, thereby feeding a multi-billion dollar prison industry with more crime and more prisons in the history of modern man. Our homelessness was and still is spinning out of control with the divide between the have and the have nots growing wider not smaller. The level of hatred and divide between Republicans and Democrats thanks to ‘leadership’ was at an all time high.

People stopped caring at work, and were just there “for a paycheck” “tell me what to do” and “I’ll live for my weekends”. And that my friends is only 2 days a week out of 7, which is a huge waste of time. Everyday we would curse at traffic, complain about the stupid people at work, both inside the company aka your boss and outside aka customers.

And how did we get there? We followed the American dream. And BC-19 it was already turning into an American nightmare. I was born into that American dream where the kool-aid I was asked to drink was as follows:

Go to school and get good grades (in subjects that were not necessarily helping anyone what their unique talents gifts and abilities are)

Then you can get into a good college where the rich have a system called Ivy that automatically guarantees that the rich get richer.

Then you can get into a good job and make lots of money, which is actually only a very small percentage of what the people at the top of the organization make, who have yet to demonstrate how their time is more expensive than everyone else's. It is shaped like a hierarchy so there’s always 99 pissed off people under the 1 that did get a promotion. Isn’t it interesting that during this time when everyone is being laid off, the executives are still drawing salary first? Our whole system of thinking that we have to get a good job from a big company whose dreams we are blood sweat and tearing for continues to generate a rat race that is not good for the rat!

Then get married to the ONE who completes you till death do us part (which btw sounds like a death sentence), have kids, buy a house, car, boat, take nice vacations because that’s “normal” and what we should do.

Retire and do nothing and then die leaving your toys to your kids.

You work hard and stay, even if you hate your job, because sacrificing your happiness to put food on the table, and staying married for the sake of the kids, and live on a restricted retirement budget till you die hoping noone will steal your 401k becomes your goal in life.

When you are a high school student you’re told to pick a major when you have no clue what you like/don’t like, good at or not good at. Usually by the time you figure it out, it’s too late to change because you’ve already spent time and money on that path that leads to “I hate my job and I’ll live for my weekends”.

Is it possible that the virus is actually more than a Pause button for us but an opportunity to STOP and take an 88 thousand look at what we are propagating? BC-19 were you 88% happy?

Or were you so exhausted everyday…waking up tired, dreading going to work, trying to do a million things taking care of kids and your boss, fighting traffic and the problem people in your life, and then so wiped out forgetting to floss day after day and then surprised that “it’s Christmas already?!” Groundhog Day but in a way things were getting worse not better because now our retirement savings were not enough, our kids were not only coming home many are addicted to something, and our parents were sick too. Do we really want to go back to that??!

Now that I have put you into a depressed coma, here’s the offer:

Is it possible that Covid-19 is offering us an opportunity for our life to start on a different trajectory for human-KIND? I was saying that with the #stayathome pandemic we now had time for #peaceathome, time to address things we never had time for, like asking ourselves what really makes us happy, and if we were 88% happy with ourselves. Now, with social distancing extended, I’m wondering if there is a massive opportunity here for the planet. Is it possible when everything is falling apart around us, the economy, our education system, our family systems, our social network, our government systems and all the BS Belief Systems that have guided all of our actions raising our kids and raising ourselves could be changed?

Before you start accusing me of spouting socialistic rhetoric hold on to your big girl panties. Picture this:

You’re born.

You are taught from an early age that you have unique gifts talents and abilities that life is a laboratory to explore in.

Schools you learn all of the subjects plus a few more…there’s opportunities for new school systems to teach and grow kids so everyone feels like they are in the advanced class.

Parents learn how to turn their own abuse into self-love so that the abuse is not unconsciously passed on.

Parents teach their kids to start the day with gratitude and appreciation for themself and others, so bullying seeds have less ground to grow in.

There are small and large businesses that operate on collaboration instead of dog-eat-dog the same way the Apple and Google just announced in their collaborative effort to fight the virus.

There are schools that grow entrepreneurs so that they are not just people who get taken advantage of and squander their life savings to motivational speakers offering success in a box. Businesses operate in a world where there is always a buyer for a product, and that we can value variety as much as we do the mainstream.

We connect the way we are doing now because of the virus…much less on flash and image, more so on meaning and messages that happens when we are so bored we reach out online to reconnect with old classmates and family.

We walk more and enjoy and appreciate the outdoors more than we ever have leaving cars and pollution behind.

How do you like my rose-colored koolaid so far?

So what’s the #peaceathome #shuttheworryup challenge here?

First you have to stop blaming everyone else and everything outside of yourself for where you are. Take a look at how you’ve abdicated your morst powerful tool in life called Choice and Focus to the News, media, Hollywood, the K family…you get my drift. 80 plus percent of us have lost our jobs. Instead of whining and moaning about it, take an hour everyday until the #stayathome edict stops and start taking responsibility for yourself.

Get in touch with who you are, what you like, what you used to want to do, what is meaningful to you and what is not, what you like about yourself and not, what you’re good at and what what you’re not, who or what keeps getting in your way, what possibilities there are with your skillset and aspirations are possible in a different industry/job/world?

Look for self-employed opportunities, collaborative partnerships, or new companies that don’t have a hierarchical structure where people are stepped on and climbed over.

Open yourself up mentally, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually for your Own Dream, where there are no nightmares.

Join the #peaceathome movement for classes and workshops that explore the limitless possibilities we all have in this thing called life.

We can do more than just delete the browsing cookies that are our habitual way of thinking and being…and create a new normal that is less frustrating, less exhausting and less painful. Thanks to CV-19 we now have the time to do a hard or soft reset…rebooting our lives into an opportunity for our lifetime!

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Dr. Marissa is the author of the #1 bestseller 8 Ways to Happiness from Wherever You Are, celebrity host/producer of the award-winning iHeart Radio and CNBC KCAA syndicated talk radio/tv show “Take My Advice, I’m Not Using It: Get Balanced/Happy with Dr. Marissa” now in it’s 8th year and a featured speaker at the Life Mastery Foundation.