All righty, it always seems a little sad to come to the end of one of these courses. [LAUGH] It's kind of funny, even a course on dealing with anxiety. All right, but that's where we're at. The main course was the three weeks you did. Mostly here I just want to summarize and yeah, mostly summarize. So really what I want to do here is kind of hit some of these main points, and just to, once again, kind of reemphasize them and keep them in your mind. And so I started off sort of here, tell yourself, your family, and your body, via your mind, that you are doing something. So that's, again, anxiety is pushing you to do something about the problem. And it's very important that we all understand that we are doing something, simply by physically distancing from others. That's a huge thing to prevent this disease from getting too big too fast, before we're able to deal with it, and slowing that down is a big, big deal. As far as doing something also for yourself and your family, I'll highlight just these points we hit. These are points of sort of mind control. So I have the Jedi over there on the right, because these are sort of Jedi-like things. I mean, it sounds fancy when the Jedi does it. These are simpler things, but critical. So work on your Jedi skills. And the first one related to that guided relaxation is learn how to put your body into a relaxed state. If you can learn how to do this, this will be a real Jedi mind trick. It will be something that you can use the rest of your life. Somebody says something to you, and you feel angry and you're about to respond. But if you can say, okay, hang on, relax, relax, then you can be cool, and you can respond in a much more thoughtful and less sort of emotionally out of control way. And that's very impressive to others who watch you, that's a sign of leadership. So that's one thing I hope you practice a lot, and leave this course with this better ability to literally control your own emotional reactions, such a hugely important skill to learn. Hopefully you've learned now about how to manage your environment so that you can minimize your exposure to the triggers that make you anxious and maximize your exposure to those that distract you or oppose, so especially those ones with extra mojo. Remember, singing, laughing, aerobic exercise, these sorts of things are very powerful as sort of an anti-anxiety experiences. So if you can work them in, fantastic. They will sort of counterbalance your need to watch the news, which, of course, you will also budget now because you know it is one of the stimuli that makes you anxious. So yeah, hopefully you can just more mindfully kind of think about how you're going to structure your day and what events you're going to plan. And you can structure those in a way that will end up making you feel a little less anxious. So that's the hope in that. And then the third one, rely heavily on a crafted structure. So it's kind of structure your day with these elements in mind and a liberal dose of social connections, right? Forget the social distancing, that's garbage. Physical distancing is where it's at and social closeness is where it's at. And not just any social closeness, but emotional connection with other human beings. That is a powerful, powerful antidote to stress and anxiety. So sprinkle that, you have the structure with these distractions with the guided relaxation, sprinkle in those rich social connections. And that will help you deal with isolation and an anxiety more comfortably. And through your social connections, you will also be helping everyone you connect with. And if you can do that, especially mindfully, and find a way to connect with people who might otherwise be alone, all the better, fantastic. So those are the big, I don't like to, they sometimes say it's good to kind of leave people with just two or three things that they can hold onto. So those are your three things, use guided relaxation to gain control, thoughtfully consider the stimuli that you're exposed to and how they affect your anxiety level. And then kind of, in a very mindful way, structure your day to include a healthy dose of distraction, a healthy dose of those things with mojo, and a healthy dose of social connectivity. And all those antidotes to the stress that we're all dealing with all the time, okay? If you do these things, you are certainly doing something. And so when your body gives you that do something feeling, your mind will kind of respond and say, yeah, yeah, on it, on it, I'm doing stuff. And that's an important message to resonate within you, okay? So that's it, this is me. There's my email address should anybody wish to reach out. But we'll also be watching the discussion forums or have been, you should have noted that by now. So we'll be sort of chiming in and reacting there. This is a community of learners, so the discussion forum is a good way for social connectivity. As I highlight, for me, I feel everything you feel, I feel the same anxiety. Knowledge of psychology doesn't makes anxiety go away, but it does allow you to kind of manage it. And so I'm walking the walk. I needed to do something that gave purpose to my days, I needed to feel like I was having some sort of positive influence. This course was something that I created with those things in mind. And I really, really hope that now that you have this knowledge and these skills, that it will really help you now, when we all really need it, but also going forward in life. So once again, I encourage you to share what you've learned with your children, with your family, more generally. Hopefully maybe you all plugged into the course together, that would be great. But yeah, consider this as you learning these skills, skills that'll help you all through your life. Final point, well, there's a final, final point. But my semi-final point is I'm happy to consider this an organic course. I touched on the topics I did because these are the topics that reporters have asked me about. And they're usually getting their push from the people themselves saying, this is what we want to understand better. So I tried to hit all of those things that I think are kind of on people's minds, but I may have missed something. If you would like me to address some specific topic related to COVID, or anxiety, or your attempt to cope with it, please feel free to reach out and ask. And if I may add just some bonus lectures as we go to kind of fill out the offering and make sure you're getting what you need out of it, yeah. Okay, so that's it for the formal course. So then the very, very last thing I want to do is dedicate this course to our healthcare providers. You guys are the heroes, man, you're the heroes. This is our front line, these are the people putting themselves and their families at risk to try to keep us healthy. We're isolating and doing what we can as a way to help them, help them by reducing the spread of the disease and allowing it to stay at a level where hopefully they can stay on top of it. But we know they are stressed, we know they are anxious. And despite that, they're doing what they're doing. And on behalf of all of us I know, a big thank you. We see your value and we love you for doing it and for being willing to really take the risks you're taking. So this course is dedicated to all of you guys and all you are doing for all of us. Thank you very much. With that, I will leave you. See you later. If you want more psychology than this, by the way, I have a full intro psych course on Coursera, you can check that out. But in the meantime, please everybody stay healthy, manage your anxiety as well as you can, let's hang in there. This will pass and we will be stronger for it. Okay, bye-bye.
