Alleviating Singaporeans’ Fear And Anxiety

When faced with COVID-19 and circuit breaker measures, many non-essential services and businesses closed their doors. Everything has to change, and not only in terms of social norms, but also lifestyle.

As a religious place of worship, my organisation continues to conduct live-streaming and pre-recorded blessing ceremonies, on-line classes and retreats. It starts from making small changes and taking small actions. At this time, people want to seek emotional support and to be reached out to spiritually, and I think people from all walks of life want to change, but the challenge is that some may not know what to do.

We hope that they can keep these challenges in perspective and bounce back from any setback they are facing and cope with life changes.  It is crucial that one feels good about oneself and has good relationships.

A survey reported that 8 in 10 Singapore employees wish to continue working from home after the circuit breaker.  Nearly one in two workers said they were less productive at home. What about my colleagues who work in the religious organization?

We are motivated to continue to carry out our routine meetings and to develop plans quickly to better serve the devotees and students who study Buddhism in classes conducted by our monastery.

Being emotionally healthy does not mean you are joyous all the time, it means that you are aware of your mood and can handle them. Emotionally healthy people still feel stress, afraid, guilt and anger.  They know how to manage their negative feelings by communicating with the management and their peers. They also know when to seek help from the people in the team.

We organize regular health and care talks and webinars to help ourselves to regulate emotions and have self-compassion.  The organization also creates more platforms for the staff to apply their wisdom, and make use of their talents and skills to help others to adapt to the current situation and the changes in their lives. We recognized that this situation is impermanent, and we help each other to adapt to changes in working conditions.

“Observe merit and appreciate kindness”. 

Contributed by: Jennifer Goh, MAPACS(L4)

This article is written in reference to https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/8-10-spore-employees-wish-continue-working-home-after-circuit-breaker-survey