By Gordon Hecht, Serta Simmons Bedding

If you are reading this article, congratulations! It means that you’ve made it through another week of shelter-at-home. And if your showroom is still open it was probably a week of minuscule traffic.

For those at home, you may be building a list of projects, tasks and cleaning endeavors that you never get around to doing. Most of us who are used to a hectic pace are now busy checking off our “Honey Do” list. Occupying your time with worthwhile tasks is great — otherwise you may get what we call at our house “a little squirrelly.”

Here’s a list you can place alongside your Honey Do list. I call it the Honey Don’t list!

Honey Don’t forget your co-workers, employees and customers. You’ll be amazed how spending a few moments to cheer them up will mirror back and brighten your mood too! This past week I spent more time on voice calls and less time on email. Between my conversations with co-workers and customers, I haven’t laughed that much in a while.

Honey Don’t get hooked on the 24-hour news cycle! Those “Breaking News!” reports are live TV’s version of click bait, just to keep you watching. In the news game the mantra is “If it bleeds, it leads,” meaning they want to fill you with bad news. Personally, I switched to watching reruns of Barney Miller and the first Bob Newhart Show.  My conclusion: It’s more fun to laugh than to panic.

Honey Don’t depend on someone else to cook your food. It’s great to support local businesses like restaurants, but you’ll do your waistline a favor and expand your creativeness when you plan to cook a meal at home from scratch. The hour you’ll spend chopping, mixing, baking and cleaning can be mentally satisfying and quite tasty. But planning is key!  I went to our local Mega-Mart but was unable to find the aisle with scratch.  It must have been next to the toilet paper.

Honey Don’t just sit around. Nothing clears the head and improves the heart like a good brisk walk. If you’re not used to it, start with as little as a quarter mile, about 5 minutes at a leisurely pace. Go easy and you’ll work up to a mile in about a week.  For those used to a walk or run, 2 miles takes about 30 minutes. Use a real cool app called “Map My Run” that’s free from Under Armour that will measure distance and calories burned.

Honey Don’t ever give up or give in. While no one can put an expiration date on the COVID situation, there will be a time when it’s in the rearview mirror. That date will be unbelievably bright. When we beat this unseen enemy it will be our generation’s VE or VJ Day. And from what I heard the following decade enjoyed one of the biggest economic booms ever. Hold on to that vision and don’t let it go.

And finally, Honey Don’t be shy or cautious about reaching out with questions, requests or just to talk. We are all in this together.

Gordon Hecht is Senior Regional Manager/Strategic Retail Group at Serta Simmons Bedding. You can reach him at ghecht@sertasimmons.com.

Upcoming Events