Saving Your Relationships From the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic

Last updated on: April 2, 2020 at 4:23 pm by Gleb Tsipursky

Saving Your Relationships From the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic 2020-04-02T16:23:43-04:00 Gleb Tsipursky

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Your relationships will be undermined or even destroyed by the coronavirus pandemic, unless you take proactive steps right now to save them. Don’t believe me? Consider the facts. The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has led to extensive measures for social distancing, figuratively and literally. We’re asked to keep at 6 to 10 feet apart from other people, and not have any gatherings over 50 people. Schools, colleges, day cares, restaurants, bars, and other public gathering venues are shut down until further notice across the US. Entertainment venues, such as stadiums, theaters, and museums, closed their doors. More and more companies ask all employees who can work from home to do so. Those over 60 or whose health is compromised are asked to stay home unless absolutely necessary, and you shouldn’t visit them if you don’t want to kill grandma.

Think it’s going to blow over in a couple of weeks? Think again. The pandemic is only gaining steam instead of stopping and will very likely be around for years, not weeks. All of these changes are not emergency measures. They’re the new normal. What will that do to your relationships?

How will you maintain your romantic life at 6 to 10 feet apart, with no restaurants, cafes, or bars as a place to hang out and no entertainment venues to attend?
How about the same question for friendships?
How will you support older adults you care about in this epidemic?
What will you do about your friends and family who are waving off concerns about the coronavirus, and will end up in a tight spot in a few weeks or months when things get really bad?
When working from home, what’s your plan for maintaining your professional collaborations and work relationships without seeing your co-workers face-to-face and working out challenges over the watercooler or in a staff meeting?
What are you going to do with kids and young adults who are home instead of in school or college?
Given that the whole family is at home, how will you avoid the little daily annoyances that can tear families apart?
How will you make sure that you cope with the strain of the situation and avoid letting the natural feelings of fear, frustration, sadness, anxiety, and anger lead you to lash out at those closest to you?

That list may feel overwhelming, and you may feel anxious over not having answers to any of these questions. Yet before rushing into figuring out your answers, take a breather. Reflect on why you didn’t realize that you should think about these questions in the first place. It’s because we all suffer from mental blindspots that scholars in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics like myself call cognitive biases. They result from a combination of our evolutionary background and specific structural features in how our brains are wired. Our primary threat response, which stems from the ancient savanna environment, is the fight-or-flight response, also known as the saber-tooth tiger response. A great fit for the kind of short-term intense risks we faced as hunter-gatherers, the fight-or-flight response results in terrible decisions in the modern environment. It’s particularly bad for defending our relationships from major disruptions caused by the slow-moving train wrecks we face in the modern environment, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, you need to watch out for three cognitive biases. The normalcy bias causes our brains to assume things will keep going as they have been – normally – and evaluate the near-term future based on our short-term past experience. As a result, we underestimate drastically both the likelihood of a serious disruption occurring and the impact of one if it does occur for our relationships and other life areas. When we make plans, we naturally believe that the future will go according to plan. That wrong-headed mental blindspot, the planning fallacy, results in us not preparing for contingencies and problems, both predictable ones and unknown unknowns. Last but not least, we suffer from the tendency to prioritize the short term, and undercount the importance of medium and long-term outcomes. Known as hyperbolic discounting, this cognitive bias is especially bad for evaluating the potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. To protect yourself and those you care about from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, you need to learn about these cognitive biases, and the effective tools informed by cognitive-behavioral therapy to defeat such mental blindspots. Only by doing so will you be able to answer the questions above effectively. That’s how you’ll not only save your relationships in these turbulent times, but also forge even stronger, healthier, and more meaningful relationships! Image Credit: Flickr/Rawpixel

Key Takeaway

Your relationships will be undermined or even destroyed by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, unless you take proactive steps right now to save them by treating our current conditions as the new normal. –> Click to tweet.

Questions to Consider (please share your answers below)

What are some of the areas where you anticipate having relationship strains?
How might the questions posed in the article help you save your relationships?

Which next steps will you take based on reading this article?

Image credit: Pixabay Originally Published at Disaster Avoidance Experts — Bio: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is on a mission to protect leaders from dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases by developing the most effective decision-making strategies. A best-selling author, he wrote Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press, 2019), The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide (Intentional Insights, 2017), and The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships (New Harbinger, 2020). He has over 550 articles and 450 interviews in Fast Company, CBS News, Time, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inc. Magazine, and elsewhere. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training as the CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, and over 15 years in academia as a behavioral economist and cognitive neuroscientist. Contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, LinkedIn, and register for his free Wise Decision Maker Course.

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About Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Known as the Disaster Avoidance Expert, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is on a mission to protect leaders from dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases, which devastate bottom lines and bring down high-flying careers. His expertise and passion is developing the most effective and profitable decision-making strategies, based on pragmatic business experience and cutting-edge behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience, to empower leaders to avoid business disasters and maximize their bottom lines. You can learn more here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/glebtsipursky/ The bestselling author of several books, Dr. Tsipursky is best known for his national bestseller on avoiding disasters and achieving success in business and other life areas, The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide. His next book, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters, is forthcoming with Career Press in November 2019. It’s the first book to focus on cognitive biases in business leadership and reveal how leaders can overcome these dangerous judgment errors effectively. After that he’s publishing The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships with New Harbinger in April 2020, the first book to focus on cognitive biases in professional and personal relationships and illustrate how we can defeat these dangerous judgment errors in our relationships. See more information here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/author-page/ Dr. Tsipursky’s cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 400 articles he published and over 350 interviews he gave to popular venues that include Fast Company, CBS News, Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today, The Conversation, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inc. Magazine, and many others, as you can see here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/media/ Dr. Tsipursky's expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training for businesses and nonprofits. He serves as the CEO of the boutique consulting, coaching, and training firm Disaster Avoidance Experts, which uses a proprietary methodology based on groundbreaking research to help leaders and organizations maximize their bottom lines by addressing potential threats, seizing unexpected opportunities, and resolving persistent personnel problems. His clients include Aflac, Balance Employment Assistance Provider, Edison Welding Institute, Fifth Third Bank, Honda, IBM, International Coaches Federation, Ohio Hospitals Association, National Association of Women Business Owners, Sentinel Real Estate, The Society for Human Resource Management, RealManage, The Columbus Foundation, Vistage, Wells Fargo, the World Wildlife Fund, and over a hundred others who achieve outstanding client results. You can learn more about that here: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/about Dr. Tsipursky also has a strong research and teaching background in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience with over 15 years in academia, including 7 years as a professor at the Ohio State University and before that a Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. His dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications include journals such as Behavior and Social Issues, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, and International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy. His civic service includes over 4 years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of Intentional Insights, an educational nonprofit advocating for research-based decision-making in all life areas. He also co-founded the Pro-Truth Pledge, a civic project to promote truthfulness and integrity for individual professionals and leaders in the same way that the Better Business Bureau serves as a commitment for businesses. He serves on the Advisory Board of Canonical Debate Lab and Planet Purpose, and is on the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed journal Behavior and Social Issues. A highly in-demand international speaker, Dr. Tsipursky has over two decades of professional speaking experience across North America, Europe, and Australia. He gets top marks from audiences for his highly facilitative, interactive, and humor-filled speaking style and the way he thoroughly customizes speeches for diverse audiences. Meeting planners describe Dr. Tsipursky as "very relatable," as "a snap to work with," and as someone who "does everything that you would want a speaker to do." Drawing on best practices in adult learning, his programs address the wide spectrum of diverse learning styles, as attested by enthusiastic client testimonials and references. He regularly shares the stage with prominent leaders, for example recently speaking on a roundtable panel with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Elhadj As Sy, Chancellor of Austria Brigitte Bierlein, CEO of Penguin Random House Markus Dohle, and billionaire philanthropist and Chair of the Bertelsmann Management Company Liz Mohn. You can learn more about his speaking and see videos here: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/speaking/ Dr. Tsipursky earned his PhD in the History of Behavioral Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, his M.A. at Harvard University in 2004, and his B.A. at New York University in 2002. He lives in and travels from Columbus, OH. In his free time, he enjoys tennis, hiking, and playing with his two cats, and most importantly, he makes sure to spend abundant quality time with his wife to avoid disasters in his personal life. Learn more about him at https://DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com/GlebTsipursky, contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, follow him on Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky and Twitter @gleb_tsipursky. Most importantly, help yourself avoid disasters and maximize success, and get a free copy of the “Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace,” by signing up for his free Wise Decision Maker Course at https:// DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com/Subscribe You can read more about the author here.

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