In her book Sexy is Timeless, beauty queen and philanthropist Luisa Diaz talks about the 10 sexy assets that lie within you, making you feel more assertive, validated and worthy. Here, she shares 10 tips to stay emotionally healthy during this pandemic and time of quarantine and isolation caused by the Coronavirus.
First of all, we are all in this together. Let’s be creative and positive in order to keep our spirits up. This pandemic is a tragedy and has caused immeasurable damage. My heart goes out to all the families who have lost a loved one and have had their worlds turned upside down. We are all vulnerable. In the meantime, we mustn’t allow Covid-19 to kill our spirit.
The first week of quarantine was hard for all of us because we didn’t have all the facts about what was going on. We were scared as we sat by the TV set watching the news and did all we could to calm our nerves. I know that’s what I did. It was a week before I was really able to accept our new reality and understand what to do from here. How can we help ourselves? “Stay home and stay healthy,” was the advice we were given. We all had busy lives and responsibilities that took up most of our time. I have since realized this is a perfect time to do things that my busy life kept me from doing, or so I claimed.
Here are 10 tips, including the 10 timeless sexy assets that lie within you, that can help you navigate through these difficult times.
1. Confidence: How do we keep our confidence intact when our lives have been turned upside down? In my book, I discuss that confidence is acquired through doing. In order to do, we must first learn. Stay informed about the dos and don’ts of staying in and keeping your loved ones, neighbors, and fellow citizens healthy. Encourage positive thinking through the practice of these protocols. Family and friends will feed off your energy. Control the things that you can control and don’t stress over what you can’t control. Plan a routine and keep a schedule to provide structure to your life. This will enable you to create a new normal for you and your loved ones. I created a schedule for my husband and myself which includes exercise, work, learning new things, reading, cooking, movies, opera, karaoke, dancing, and fun date nights. Develop one that works for you and with your family.
2.Knowledge: What a perfect time to enhance your overall understanding of subjects that have interested you at some point in life but you never took the time to follow up on. It is extremely important to keep your mind sharp and engaged. Avoid the temptation to just sit in front of the TV and eat all day. This is an opportunity for you to learn something new. Try to prepare healthy and delicious meals using recipes from books that you always meant to try. You have the time now. What is something that you always wanted to do and didn’t have the time for? Maybe learning a new language or how to play that instrument collecting dust in the closet? There are plenty of online courses to help you learn. Perhaps you want to learn to play a game everyone is talking about? My husband is teaching me how to play chess. After dinner, we set up the board and start playing. It sharpens the mind and strengthens the bond between us. Perhaps you always thought about writing. It could be a novel, a screenplay, a poem, or your memoir. Once again, plenty of time and courses online to help. One of my personal favorite online courses is the app “Master Class” where accomplished experts teach in their field. From Carlos Santana on guitar playing to Judd Apatow on comedy, Martin Scorsese on film, Sara Blakely on self-made entrepreneurship, and Ann Wintour on Creativity and Leadership- there are so many great classes! I love this app, and I highly recommend it at this time.
3.Laughter: At this moment of crisis, it is hard to laugh, but we need to find the humor to survive this pandemic and to keep our spirits alive and our immune systems strong. Let’s treat ourselves to funny movies with the family or with a friend that you can coordinate and share the experience with. Even watching a comedy alone can boost your spirit. I particularly love laughing- sometimes my husband finds me laughing my honey off in front of the television. I like classic movies like Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe as well as stand up comics like Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock. Find one that makes you laugh. When I laugh I feel more energy and the dark clouds disappear. It boosts my spirits. I feel lighter and more hopeful with the knowledge that things will get better.
4.Kindness: Along with love, kindness is the most curative remedy in all human interaction. Everybody responds to acts of kindness. During this pandemic, the one thing that history has shown us time and time again is that, regardless of what people may believe, kindness does lie within us and through kindness we can come together to help each other. We are seeing small businesses like restaurants giving out free meals to needy families as well as large corporations converting their factories to make masks and other protective gear for first-line care providers in hospitals. We see designers making masks instead of couture gowns. We are coming together to help stop the spread of Covid-19. This is the most beautiful thing about being human- our innate desire to help one another. For those of us who are not on the front lines courageously working to save lives at the risk of our own, there are things we can still do. If you would like to be part of the snowball of kindness, please try to donate to food banks for the families who are struggling to eat. Maybe you have a skill set that can help others even from the safety of your own home- perhaps counseling. Reach out to a friend, mentor, or family member who is alone to share a kind thought. A word of compassion and empathy goes a long way. This is a time of forgiving and coming together.
5.Listening: With all the noise of society and the news around the coronavirus, sometimes we don’t know what to believe or we get so overwhelmed that we tune the information out. Please don’t. This is a time to listen carefully. The situation is changing rapidly, and you need to stay informed. Listen when the local authorities say to stay at home to avoid spreading the virus. Take the necessary precautions when you go out. Living in New York City -one of the current hot spots in the world- I go out wearing two gloves, one latex then my regular gloves. Why? Because sometimes we need to touch our phone. So I take my glove off and I call or text with my latex gloves on. I keep my hands safe while taking off my street gloves. I wear a mask, and I practice social distancing when I go to the supermarket with my husband. When I get home, I leave my shoes by the door, take my jacket off, along with my outer clothes, and I don’t put them in the closet with the other clothes but separate them for 24 hours to air out. I wear my latex gloves when I unpack the groceries. I wash all the vegetables and fruits. I wash my hands after I finish arranging the food. I then take a shower and change into new clothes. I listen to what the medical experts are saying. This is something far more serious than we expected. This is not just the flu. Please, let’s listen and be safe.
6. Self Care: Maintaining self care during this pandemic is extremely important. Keeping our immune system strong is crucial, but so is maintaining our spirits. A healthy mind and body are linked and essential to achieving holistic health. At the beginning, I let the situation get the best of me and I made excuses for avoiding my exercise routine. After all, the gyms were closed. However, I quickly got over that and realized that taking care of myself was the very reason I was in self-quarantine. Most of us can’t remain 100% isolated, so when we have encounters with people outside our home -which includes a walk to get some fresh air or going to the supermarket- a strong immune system can be the difference between contracting the virus or not. I put away my excuses, went to “YouTube,” and found various exercise videos about 15-30 minutes long to get me started. They are amazing. Each day I alternate between my abs, arms, legs, etc. I also started yoga, which I always wanted to get into.
Here are other things you can do to take care of yourself that maybe you wanted to do but put off due to your previously hectic schedule. Treat yourself with homemade plant-based face masks and moisturizers. Go to YouTube to find out how. Color your hair if you have the products at home or order them online to avoid going out. Maybe you have always thought about coloring your hair pink or blue but didn’t know whether it was a good idea because of your job. Try it and see how it looks and how it makes you feel. Keep it creative and entertaining. In order to keep yourself strong try to relax by reading or listening to some spiritual podcasts — everything is at your fingertips with just one click. Take a bubble bath (bonus: Add a glass of wine). If you are with loved ones, try doing things for each other. Just like our primate ancestors who lived in the jungles, grooming each other is a form of bonding. I just gave my husband a manicure. Give each other a good neck and shoulder massage. Physical bonding is important for our spirits as humans. It is also a perfect time to come together and cook family dinners. For the first time, my husband cooked a whole dinner with a Venezuelan flavor for the two of us with only my gentle supervision. We enjoyed chopping the vegetables together, opened up a bottle of wine, and more than made the best of it.
7. The Spirit of Dance: In times like this, we have to make the effort to cheer ourselves up by putting on our favorite music and dancing. Put on those songs that get your heart and adrenaline pumping and shake your body like no one is watching. Guess what? Nobody is watching. So, as Taylor Swift would say, let’s “Shake it off.” I love that song. Find one that makes your heart pump and just dance. Dancing is good for our soul and for our immune system. Growing up in Venezuela, music was part of my culture. I remember my grandmother always putting on music in the house and dancing with me, my aunties, and uncles while she cooked. Try that- dance with your children or partner. Let’s try to keep our spirits alive. My husband and I love music, so there is always music in our home. I make up a weekly schedule for us. Friday night is date night, which means dinner and dancing that ends in karaoke using our IPad linked to a Bluetooth speaker. We have a great time. Let’s make the best of it. When life throws you lemons…well you know the rest!
8. Individuality: We all have different roles- daughter, mother, sister, wife, employee, employer, mentor, or student. Now is a good time to listen to our inner voice and really explore our own individuality. Try and do those things that are unique to you. It could be revisiting some classic literature that you enjoyed as a student. I particularly love Greek mythology. My husband loves the writings of great American authors such as Melville and Mark Twain. I love reading biographies and learning about the lives of other people. Right now I am reading a book about the lives of gutsy women written by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. It’s about amazing women, throughout time and history, who stood up and spoke up, often at their own expense, but changed the times they lived in. The question is, what is really important to you? What makes you happy? Are you doing it? If not, plan now how you can change the course of your own life so you can do more of the things you want to do after this pandemic is over. Be creative. Research and educate yourself. Write down your goals so you can be more focused on them. Because of coronavirus we will work differently, learn differently, and live differently. How do you want to live? Now is a good time to plan some of the changes in your life that will bring you more fulfillment.
9. Femininity/ Masculinity: Staying home 24 hours a day, seven days a week with nowhere else to go can be challenging for anyone. Left to our own devices we might choose to just stay in our pajamas. I know I did the first week of quarantine. But that didn’t help my spirit at all. It is essential as humans to maintain structure and boundaries and to stay in touch with who and what we are. Let’s not forget our daily hygiene routine which is to brush your teeth, take a shower, brush your hair and put on clean fresh clothes meant to be seen even if you are alone. Why do I do that? Because that makes me feel better about myself. Trying to maintain our balance during this pandemic is essential to keep our sanity. We all possess feminine attributes and qualities such as gentleness, tenderness, empathy, sensitivity, caring, sweetness, compassion, tolerance, nurturance, patience, forgiveness, and love within ourselves. It is important to embrace our feminine qualities at this time. I am living with my husband, and I appreciate that he also keeps up his grooming routine. It is important right now that while we are spending all this time together we look and smell good for each other. As I mentioned before, we have date nights, which beyond just dinner, music, and dancing, includes dressing up as if we were going out for an elegant evening. I wear something stylish, and he wears a well-fitted jacket over a crisp, clean fitted shirt and pants. It is imperative to take care of each other and your relationship, including the children too. If you are not in a relationship and one day choose to be in one, why not prepare now? We are using video conferencing now more than ever. Let’s be presentable to the people we communicate with. This is a good time to do the work and bring the best version of yourself back into your business and personal life.
10. Social Graces: This crisis we are facing has also brought about a situation that we, perhaps, had never experienced before with our loved ones: being around them 24/7. I don’t care how much you love them- we are all bound to step on each other’s toes. So here are a few tips to helps us navigate this quarantine graciously. It is extremely important to keep our basic courtesies such as “Good morning,” and “Please and thank you.” I know we are all under tense circumstances, but no one likes to be spoken to rudely or get put down. If you are in a relationship let’s be sure to appreciate the little things that we do for each other. It is also important to help your loved ones with chores around the house. Meal preparation, cleaning dishes, laundry, washing floors, and countertops, etc. can add up. My husband and I love cooking together, and he helps me a lot with the household chores. Thank God! Cooking three meals per day can be a lot of work. If you have children, try to involve them in household chores, provided they are old enough. Discipline is extremely important at this time. I believe that one member of the family should be the manager. Just as every well-run company has a manager, so should a well run home. Social graces under the coronavirus is not about what fork to use during dinner, but rather about self-control, politeness, and kindness. Let’s be kind and appreciative to ourselves and our loved ones. Kindness is cool, and we all need it during this time.
These are some of the 10 timeless sexy tips to keep ourselves sharp and our lives productive during this time of quarantine and isolation that we are all experiencing due to Covid-19. Be safe, and stay sexy and timeless. Besitos. For more information go to my website www.luisadiaz.com and follow me on Instagram @Luisadiaztv.
If you would like to ask me any questions, or just need some emotional support, please email me @info@luisadiaz.com.
photo credit: Richard Simpson
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