We live in interesting times. This phrase has been coming to mind all week after meeting with a family who is managing the care of their elderly father with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. They asked questions about managing his care and shared their other daily challenges. For example, like you, they have hectic family lives, demanding professional careers and feel the stress and unease that has come with threats to our national sovereignty and a pending trade war with the United States of America. It begs the question, how can we, as advisors, help ourselves and our clients to stay steady and cope in interesting times?

The phrase we live in interesting times has often been attributed to a Chinese curse translated as ‘may you live in interesting times’ and various politicians and speakers have quoted it since the early 20^th century. Interestingly, numerous scholars have researched the phrase’s origin with no clear conclusion. In today’s context, the phrase encapsulates what most of us feel with increasing pressure and stress from many directions.

Reflecting on people’s increasing uneasiness and stress, I am reminded of a client newsletter we wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic. In it, we explored various ways of coping with fear, grief, anger, and uneasiness during the pandemic.

Here is an excerpt.

Every day we try to look for things that inspire us. Here is one prophetic line from the Nobel prize-winning Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere.”

Heaney wrote a collection of poems, ‘Wintering Out’, published in 1972. They were written at the height of the Irish Troubles while he was teaching in California. He said he thought of cattle in winter fields. “… Beasts standing under a hedge, plastered in wet, looking at you with big patient eyes, just taking what came until something else came along. Times were bleak…”

And yet, the promise of hope.

During troubled times, we can expect to feel anxious and stressed. We all have stressors, and no one has all the answers. A caregiving or work situation can easily disrupt everyday life, but today’s additional stressors are sometimes challenging to manage.

Resources for Coping with Day-to-Day Stress

Remember, mental health is health; it is as important to maintain it as your physical health. Trying to juggle and struggle with life with the care of an elderly person, along with all the other stressors, can be exhausting. There are so many factors beyond our control, yet how we respond and rise to meet the challenges is under our control.

Listed are some excellent resources you, your clients, and your colleagues may find helpful.

• The Mental Health Commission is a trusted source of information in Canada, and you can find a useful resource hub there.
• Call or text 988 for the National Suicide Crisis hotline. The hotline is answered 24 hours a day.
• You can access mental health services across Canada from this link.
• Limit your time on social media. Doom-scrolling is not helpful.
• There is an extraordinary amount of misinformation and disinformation, especially on social media. Find trusted sources of information for global, national, and local news.
• Reach out to friends, family, or neighbours so you don’t become socially isolated.
• Some of our team members use apps for stress relief activities and encourage clients to use them too. The Calm app is a favourite among us, and it has Canadian meditation guides and a free trial. There are many others as well.
• Get outside into nature, walk, or do some outdoor activities. The days are getting longer.

For many of us, getting into nature and especially being near a body of water on an ocean beach or near a lake or river is somehow calming. There is an excellent article on the Mental Health Commission website about the therapeutic power of “blue space” or a body of water.

In the article, Dr. Jenny Roe, the Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Design and Health, discusses how blue spaces have “four triggers that activate the human parasympathetic nervous system, a network of nerves that relaxes our bodies.”

The first trigger is water or blue space, which gives us the sense of “being away” or escaping from our daily habits and behaviours. Secondly, large bodies of water, especially, can give us a feeling of endless possibilities and an “infinite existence.” Thirdly, the sound and sight of water, as it rushes over rocks or gurgles in a brook, can capture “hard fascination – a concentration of our focus through stimulation” and “soft fascination – an unconscious partial capturing of our attention that requires little effort and frees the mind to roam.” And the fourth trigger of water gives us a sense of comfort and belonging with our environment.

We live in interesting times, and at some point, we will need to think about how we, as professionals, will cope with the added stressors and how we can help our clients manage.