Here are six steps to protect your psyche against the fear-based and anxiety-riddled message of Day Zero.
The Western Cape Province has a typical Mediterranean climate with warm, dry summers and mild, moist winters. However, a severe drought is threatening the livelihood of its capital city and popular tourist destination Cape Town.
The water crisis is a wake-up call for many locals, as well as people for nationally and internationally. It is evident that we have taken regular winter rainfall and thus water for granted. We have become complacent about the use and supply of it. We have been consuming this increasingly scarce resource with no long-term plan. We have believed that water would last forever.
We are slowly but surely becoming aware that this valuable natural resource must be looked after it with great awareness.
Walking through the arrival hall at Cape Town International Airport, you get bombarded with big billboards telling you about the water crisis. Driving on the roads, you are constantly reminded to save water; that Day Zero, when the taps run dry, is on its way.
This continuous flow of information impacts the psyche of residents and visitors.
However, for every downside there is an upside. A crisis breaks down polarity and barriers in a community. The net effect of a shared challenge is that it unites people and creative solutions are born. Entrepreneurship, innovation, and new ways of doing things is the consequence of a city in crisis. Teamwork becomes the order of the day.
The effect this challenge is having on me is that I too have become more conscious of how I use water. I have become more innovative in bringing my bit.
Protect your psyche in six simple steps.
Here are six steps to protect your psyche against the fear-based and anxiety-riddled message of Day Zero:
- Do your part in saving water as every drop counts. Be a participant and add value to your community. Be water-wise.
- Focus not only on the negative but also on the other richness in the resources of your city or town. Notice, for instance, how the beautiful trees keep on surviving irrespective of the drought.
- Share with others how you feel that you can make a difference and guard against joining the mob mentality of negativity.
- Be grateful every day for abundance in all the other forms present in your life.
- Share out of your abundance – for instance, donate water bottles for less privileged communities.
- Look at all the good things coming out of the crisis: See the unity the common enemy called “drought” brought to your community.
