The covid-19 pandemic offers opportunities worldwide to do better, once the clouds have cleared. So do tons of people like me and you think everyday. Many dogmas have already flew out the window in recent months, many others may follow.
There are the seeds of hope, there is the massive challenge to shape a new world soon. But there is more that connects the members of the new resistance: they are constructive, creative and rightly impudent. People who resist demand respect for democracy and try to force change both inside and outside systems and organizations. The new resistance has new faces, but is based on a rich history and a strong civil society that is too often under attack.
The new resistance is badly needed now and as soon as COVID-19 is under control, or something like it. The recovery of our societies, of our economies, of our cities, of people will not go smoothly. We applaud, perhaps too soon, the prospect of a vaccine and new freedom. But practical objections, mistrust and a neoliberal roadmap stand in the way of a smooth global vaccination.
At the same time, the pandemic offers opportunities to do better when the clouds clear. Opportunities not to let those few annual percentage points of growth in gross national product get in the way of people and their needs too often.
Many dogmas have already flew out the window in recent months, many others may follow. Massive investments were smoothly planned to keep the economy going. I saw it was okay, though there was no other option. But how well prepared are we for a historic recovery with leaders in many places who are making the lives of countless others more difficult or nearly impossible just now?
It is sometimes a challenge not to become cynical. I look around and see that too many strings of the recovery are in the hands of people who usually did not care about the consequences of the corona crisis for the most vulnerable. I look in the mirror, but I also address you. Look elsewhere, avert your gaze and look for weeds and naturalists, people kicking shins and reminding us that, every day, we determine the future together.
The corona virus has been gripping us for months. One thing is certain: the pandemic is changing the way we live and work. What is the lasting impact on financial services? What will happen to the branches of large banks and how important is personal contact for consumers? In this blog you will find a bit more in depth.
1. Digital banking is gaining momentum
In recent years, we have already seen
significant growth in digital payments. This is accelerated by COVID-19:
consumers are becoming more dependent on digital transactions and are also
reluctant to use cash, for fear of transmission of the virus. In my
personal perception consumers often opt for digital payments. This includes
credit cards, pin payments, internet banking and mobile payments.
Within the financial world, the effect of the corona crisis is like a turbo on an already accelerated engine of change. In some big countries where ICT is well developed, COVID-19 has only strengthened this position more and more. This number of contactless and mobile payments has further increased in recent months. Mark my words that this situation will continue.
2. Need for personal contact remains
The number of physical offices and branches
in digital services was already slowly declining: the lockdowns worldwide are
making an additional contribution to this decline. In my opinion I think
big financial institutes will accelate the reduction of their number of
branches, and that some branches that are currently closed will no longer open
due to the crisis.
But believe me, remarkably, consumers still
need personal contact. Otherwise I don’t think that this will return to the old
normal.
Consumers probably still want personal,
face-to-face contact when seeking advice on complex financial products and
transactions.
Nevertheless, the pandemic has shown how
important it is to have digital services in order and to familiarize customers
with them.
3. More savings, more security
Consumers take less risk with their
money. Before the corona outbreak, a large amount preferred to save their
money. We also see that consumers are more oriented towards their life,
household effects and health insurance are some of the things playing these
days.
4. Loyalty in question
The way financial services firms deal with
the corona crisis is impacting consumer loyalty. People are changing their
financial strategies on the run. Many of them are switching to BigTechs and
Fintechs.
Major financial players must ensure that they continue to bind their consumers in the coming period, for example through new products and services or an improved customer experience. Otherwise, there is a good chance that young consumers in particular will switch to new digital alternatives.
Stronger from the crisis
The way in which organizations act in this corona crisis determines their image among consumers. Not just in the short term: this picture lingers for months or years. It is now a matter of helping insecure consumers with their financial issues. This is the perfect opportunity to think about sustainability policy. By investing in digitization, you increase customer loyalty and your organization will emerge stronger from the crisis.
In the so called new normal where COVID-19 is rolling over all screen around the world, we must not forget to pay sufficient attention to ourselves and love once. From my side I went to do some research which I am sharing in this blog item. I do hope that you as reader and follower can find yourself in the different circumstances. I wish you happy reading. It’s all about you yourself and your environment.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE LASTING
If you were raised by parents who continually told you what a good person you were, who loved you, encouraged you, supported you, and believed in you, no matter what you did or didn’t do, you would grow up with the belief that you were a good and valuable person. By the age of three, this belief would lock in and become a fundamental part of the way you view yourself in relation to your world. Thereafter, no matter what happens to you, you would hold to this belief. It would become your reality.
If you were raised by parents who did not know how powerful their words and behaviors could be in shaping your personality, they could very easily have used destructive criticism, disapproval, and physical or emotional punishment to discipline or control you. When a child is continually criticized at an early age, he soon concludes that there is something wrong with him. He doesn’t understand why it is that he is being criticized or punished, but he assumes that his parents know the truth about him, and that he deserves it. He begins to feel that he is not valuable or lovable. He is not worth very much. He must therefore be worthless.
Almost all personality problems in adolescence and adulthood are rooted in what psychologists refer to as love withheld. The child needs love like roses need rain. When children feel unloved, they feel unsafe and insecure. They think, “I’m not good enough.” They begin to engage in compensatory behaviors to make up for this inner anxiety. This sense of love deprivation is manifested in misbehavior, personality problems, bursts of anger, depression, hopelessness, lack of ambition, and problems with people and relationships.
YOU ARE BORN UNAFRAID
The child is born with no fears, except those of falling and loud noises. All other fears have to be taught to the child as he or she grows up.
The two major fears we all develop are the fear of failure or loss and the fear of criticism or rejection. We begin to learn the fear of failure if we are continually criticized and punished when we try some- thing new or different. We are shouted at and told, “No! Get away from there! Stop that! Put that down!” Physical punishment and the withholding of love, possibilities that scare us and make us feel insecure, often accompany these shouts and criticisms.
We soon begin to believe that we are too small, too weak, incompetent, inadequate, and incapable of doing anything new or different. We express this feeling with the words, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Whenever we think about doing something new or challenging, we automatically respond with feelings of fear, trembling, and a churning stomach. We react exactly as if we are afraid of getting a spanking. We say, “I can’t” over and over.
The fear of failure is the primary reason for failure in adult life. As the result of destructive criticism in childhood, we hold ourselves back as adults. We sell ourselves short. We quit before we even try the first time. Instead of using our amazing minds to figure out how to get what we want, we use our reasoning ability to create reasons why we can’t, and why the things we want are not possible for us.
THE NEED TO BE LOVED
The second major fear that holds us back, undermines our confidence, and destroys our desire for a happy
life is the fear of rejection, and its expression, criticism. This emotion is
learned in early childhood as the result of our parents expressing disapproval
of us whenever we do something they don’t like, or don’t do something that they
expect. As a result of our displeasing them, they become angry and withdraw the
love and approval we need so much as children.
The fear of being unloved and alone is so traumatic for a
child that she soon conforms her behavior to do whatever she thinks her parents
will approve of. She loses her spontaneity and uniqueness. She begins to think,
“I have to! I have to! I have to!” She concludes, “I have to do whatever Mommy
and Daddy want me to, or they won’t love me, and I’ll be all alone!”
CONDITIONAL LOVE
As an adult, a child raised with what is called “conditional
love” (as opposed to unconditional love, the greatest gift one person can give
to another) becomes hypersensitive to the opinions of others. In its extreme
form, he cannot do anything if there is the slightest chance that someone else
may not approve. He projects his childhood relationship with his parents onto
the important people in his adult life—spouse, boss, relatives, friends,
authority figures—and tries
desperately to earn their approval, or at least not lose it.
The fears of failure and rejection, caused by destructive
criticism in early childhood, are the root causes of most of our unhappiness
and anxiety as adults. We feel, “I can’t!” or “I have to!” continually. The
worst feeling is when we feel, “I can’t, but I have to!” or “I have to, but I
can’t!”
We want to do something, but we are afraid of failure or
loss, or if we are not afraid of loss, we are afraid of disapproval. We want to
do something to improve our lives, at work or at home, but we are afraid that
we may fail, or that someone else may criticize us, or both.
For most people, their fears govern their lives. Everything
they do is organized around avoiding failure or criticism. They think
continually about playing it safe, rather than striving for their goals. They
seek security rather than opportunity.
DOUBLE YOUR RATE OF FAILURE
Once an author named by Arthur Gordon approached Thomas J.
Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, and asked him how he could succeed faster as a
writer. Thomas J. Watson, one of the giants of American business, replied with
these profound words: “If you want to be successful faster, you must double
your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.”
The fact is that the more you have already failed, the more
likely it is you are on the verge of great success. Your failures have prepared
you to succeed. This is why a streak of good luck seems to follow a streak of
bad luck. When in doubt, “double your rate of failure. ”The more things you try, the more likely you
are to triumph. You overcome your fears only by doing the thing you fear until
the fear has no more control over you.
YOUR MENTAL HARD DRIVE
Everything you know about yourself, all your beliefs, are
recorded on the hard drive of your personality, in your self-concept. Your
self-concept precedes and predicts your levels of performance and effectiveness
in everything you do. Because of the law of correspondence, you always behave
on the outside in a manner consistent with your self-concept on the inside. All
improvement in your life therefore begins with an improvement in your
self-concept.
You have an overall self-concept that is made up of all your
beliefs about yourself and your abilities. This bundle of beliefs includes all
the experiences, decisions, successes, failures, ideas, information, emotions,
and opinions of your life up to now. This general self-concept determines how
and what you think and feel about yourself, and measures how well you are doing
in general.
YOUR MINI-SELF-CONCEPTS
You have a series of “mini-self-concepts” as well. These
mini-self- concepts combine to make up your overall self-concept. You have a
self-concept for every area of your life that you consider important. This
mini-self-concept determines how you think, feel, and perform in that area.
For example, you have a self-concept for how healthy and fit you are, and how much you eat or
exercise. You have a self-concept for how likable and popular you are with
others, especially with members of the opposite sex. You have a self-concept
for what kind of a spouse or parent you are, for how good a friend you are to
your friends, how smart you are, and how well you learn. You have a self-
concept for every sport you play, and for every activity you engage in,
including how well you drive your car.
You have a self-concept for how well you do your work, and
for how well you do each part of your work. You have a self- concept for how
much money you make and how well you save and invest it. This is a critical
area. The fact is that you can never earn much more or less than your
self-concept level of income. If you want to make more money, you have to
change your beliefs about yourself relative to income and money.
CHANGE YOUR BELIEFS
In every case, if you want to change your performance and
your results in any area of your life, you have to change your self- concept—or
your beliefs about yourself—for that area. Fortunately, your beliefs are
largely subjective. They are not always based on facts. Instead, they are based
largely on information you have taken in and accepted as true, sometimes with
very little evidence or proof.
The very worst beliefs you can have are self-limiting beliefs
of any kind. These are beliefs about yourself that cause you to feel somehow
limited or deficient in a particular
area. These beliefs are seldom true, but if you accept them as valid estimates
of your ability, they become true for you, exactly as if they were correct.
The starting point of unlocking your potential, and accomplishing
more than you ever have before, is for you to challenge your self- limiting
beliefs. You begin this process of freeing yourself from self-limiting beliefs
by imagining that, whatever they are, they are completely untrue. Imagine for
the moment that you have no limitations on your abilities at all. Imagine that
you could be, do, or have anything you really wanted in life. Imagine that your
potential is unlimited in any way. For example, imagine that you could be
earning twice as much as you are earning today. Imagine that you could be
living in a bigger house, driving a better car, and enjoying a more expensive
lifestyle.
Imagine that you have the ability to be one of the top people
in your field. Imagine that
you are one of the most popular, powerful, and persuasive personalities in your
social and business world. Imagine that you are calm, confident, and unafraid of anything. Imagine
that you could set and achieve any goal you put your mind to. This is how you
begin changing your thinking and changing your life.
The starting point of eliminating your fears, and releasing
your potential, is to reprogram your mental hard drive with new, positive,
constructive, and courageous beliefs about yourself and your future. I really
hope that you learned something more now you have read this blog.
Feel free to drop me your comments and maybe your very own COVID-19 lifestyle experiences. It will be highly appreciated. Thank you in advanced. Stay Safe and Blessings.
One is too busy to get bored, while the other
slowly but surely no longer knows what to do with himself. Do you
recognize yourself in the latter? Then this is the time to look at the
deeper layer that lies beneath your boredom. If you get bored you can
easily use that to your advantage, you just have to know how.
Researchers around the world are
trying to figure out exactly what causes boredom, what we can do about it and
whether there is a link between boredom and depression. Lead researcher
and psychology professor James Danckert describes boredom as follows: “We
define boredom as an uncomfortable desire to be busy with something, but fail
to fulfill that desire.” So this definition may well explain why you
might get bored during this corona crisis, since your routine is upset and your
sense of freedom is limited. You are not alone in it, me too and more people
around the globe.
Emotions
Before
we can get deeper into boredom, ask yourself if you are really bored. You
can also confuse boredom with emotions such as fear or fatigue. Try to
identify what you feel to find out.
Change it
In
essence, boredom tries to tell you that you don’t spend your time the way you
actually want it to. It is an important signal that you want to change the
situation. Whenever you get bored, remember that you probably need and can
change something about the situation. What counts is the action you take
after this awareness, which can keep you busy and make you a more creative and
successful person.
BOREDOM – AN EXCELLENT TIME FOR INTROSPECTION.
And we don’t like that very
much, because who knows what deep-seated problems will emerge as soon as we
take the time to get bored.
We don’t like boredom for three
reasons:
First of all, boredom gives us a sense of concern – “something is missing”. We
are so used to being amused by a constant stream of external stimuli that when
they are missing we experience the feeling that something is not right.
In addition, boredom triggers our ‘fear response’ . We find it scary to be
alone with our thoughts, fearing that they would be confrontational. To
keep out the mirror that keeps boredom out, you stay busy – whether it is
really productive or fun .
Finally, boredom forces you to step out of your comfort zone , which feels unnatural. As
soon as you realize that you may have to do a number of things differently ,
in order to feel lively – for example, even after starting to read/write that
book – it is safer to maybe watch some good series after all.
To shake off these feelings
above, you should therefore quickly turn to external stimuli such as Netflix,
your smartphone or another distractor to avoid feeling this boredom
So a luxury problem, boredom. We
have so many options to choose what
we want to spend our attention and time on that we get overwhelmed when we
don’t use it – we get bored .
That’s why you take every opportunity to stay busy. You do
not notice the boredom (and dissatisfaction) and therefore do not have to be
alone with any confrontational thoughts.
So in order to reap the benefits of boredom – an
opportunity for introspection – you should not look for more stimuli and
novelty, but as little as
possible.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED IN YOUR BOREDOM
So you are not going to build a
vegetable garden. What is it? Absolutely nothing except
a good put to reorganize your thoughts in order.
Meditate regularly – make room for confrontational
thoughts.
Meditation would have been the
last thing on your mind if you wanted to tackle boredom.
Now that you know that boredom
is a mental state , it may make sense that meditation helps
you see boredom differently. It helps you to understand that boredom is
not a threatening thing, and it helps you place those negative and
confrontational thoughts.
Meditating gives you the
opportunity to look at the underlying causes why you avoid rest and are always
busy.
And that doesn’t have to be lengthy sessions – 5 minutes a day is enough to use the unrest that boredom creates as a moment of introspection.
Get creative with your thoughts – let them run
wild.
Instead of looking for external
stimulus, use your boredom to feed your brain with creativity. After all,
as soon as you are bored, your thoughts get the chance to roam freely – allow
it.
So stop entertaining yourself with your smartphone and see where your thoughts are stranded. Write them down, articulate them using ‘free writing’ or capture them in color – in a mind map for example!
Get creative with your thoughts – let them run
wild.
Instead of looking for external
stimulus, use your boredom to feed your brain with creativity. After all,
as soon as you are bored, your thoughts get the chance to roam freely – allow
it.
So stop entertaining yourself with your smartphone and see where your thoughts are stranded. Write them down, articulate them using ‘free writing’ or capture them in color – in a mind map for example!
Who knows what brilliant ideas you come up with during the
CORONA LOCKDOWN!
Let me know in the comments how you solve your boredom things.
Okay, we'll stay in until I don't know when.
Really depends on the situation / circumstances.
Everything changes.
You have no influence on many things.
You might be watching the news all day.
Try to find something on social media.
But because you don't know exactly what, you keep scrolling.
You are stressing yourself over things that you have no influence on.
Hoping you recognize it when you see it.
Maybe it's a good time to stop scrolling.
How are you?
What have you discovered about yourself in recent days?
Where are you:
1. Disappointment / Anxiety -Why
2. Acceptance - Nothing can be done
3. Embrace - What an opportunity!
The faster you are in embrace, the sooner you will be ahead again.
This is it.
See it as it is, not as it should be.
(then there was no war, famine and chocolate made you slim and intelligent).
This is not tra la la science.
Get deeper into various skills during this period. Try to solve long drawn-out cases. You can do so much without feeling trapped.
THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO!
In this COVID-19 quarantine time, look for new things and embrace them for later.
The world will never be the same as before the outbreak of COVID-19.
And right now it is important to move with it.
Transform.
Speed is everything now.
Whatever you do, remember
- Even if we are in quarantine, you are not alone
- Although the environment is now uncertain and miserable, you will find guidance in your own perseverance, resourcefulness and character.
- Even though everything is now chaos, know that every order always creates new order
Be strong.
Show who you are.
This is your chance.
In the meantime, I will continue to provide you with inspiration, love and positivity.
Greeting from
The Caribbean Blog Authority
The era we are in now, the negative is much more prominent than the positive. You see that many people experience stress and suffer from all kind of illness [high blood pressure etc]. While our access to food is better than ever and we have so many possibilities, the well-being of our spiritual state is diminishing. How did that happen? Because we always long for more. More happiness, more prosperity. Is that really necessary? And who says that?…Now we have the COVID-19 between us…Think about the above and make it a positive minded discussion.