Notes from Isolation - Week 2: Finding flow in crisis

“Sooner or later comes a crisis in our affairs, and how we meet it determines our future happiness and success. Since the beginning of time, every form of life has been called upon to meet such crisis.” - Robert Collier

Among family, friends and colleagues I’ve observed a fairly consistent response to the rapidly evolving Covid-19 crisis. Over the past two weeks, most conversations and social media feeds seem to be dominated by people striving valiantly for a sense of normalcy — hustling to establish new family and work routines, leading or participating in Olympic-inspired fitness schedules, becoming yogis, creating Montessori schools on their kitchen tables and orchestrating family lockdown adaptations of Les Misérables. They hope to buckle down for a short stint until life returns to normal. 

Even with my ‘glass half full’ outlook on life and my own quarantine-driven aspirations to become a Michelin-star chef, whilst I wholeheartedly applaud the energy, drive and creativity to do this, I wish anyone who pursues that path the best of luck...

Behind this scramble for short-term productivity is a futile assumption. The answer to the question everyone is asking — "When will this be over?" — is simple, yet hard to accept. The answer is... never. 

Here’s the reality. Global crisis and catastrophes change the world. Even if we contain the Covid-19 crisis within a few months, the lasting impacts of this pandemic will shape our future for years, perhaps decades to come. The way we move, build, spend, learn, and connect will be changed forever. There’s no way that our lives will resume as if this had never happened. And so, while it might feel good in the moment or in the short-term, it’s foolish to dive into a frenzy of activity or obsess about our personal productivity right now. Instead, it’s healthier to embrace the new normal. The mentally, emotionally and spiritually sane response for all of us is to prepare to be forever changed.

I’m struggling like everyone else - searching for answers, balance and following my own coping mechanisms. There are days that I struggle to get out of bed. There are also days that I find myself in a frenzy of baking, drawing and bending into downward dogs until 2am. To help navigate the new normal (in whatever form that takes), I’ve started drawing from experience in previous crises and those shared by others. These have included natural disasters, political and economic unrest and uncertainty and personal challenge. 

Based on this, I thought I’d share a few thoughts and observations below in the hope that it provides some useful ideas as “physical distancing” and “PPE” become part of our everyday vernacular. 

Mobilize
“Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is startled, all that is within and without you will come to your assistance.” - Robert Collier

Your first few days and weeks in a crisis are crucial. Make plenty of room to allow for a mental adjustment - it’s completely normal to feel bad, lost and pretty discombobulated. Consider it a good thing that you’re not in denial and that you’re allowing yourself to work through the anxiety that is completely natural. No sane person feels good during a global disaster - be grateful for the discomfort of your sanity. At this stage, focus on essentials like food, family, friends, and maybe fitness. (Spoiler alert: You won’t become an Olympic athlete or a yogi  in the next two weeks, so don’t put ridiculous expectations on your body.)

Next, ignore everyone posting ‘productivity porn’ on social media. It’s ok that you keep waking up at 2am. It’s ok that you forgot to eat lunch, ate a bag of Doritos for dinner and can’t find the willpower to do a Zoom yoga class. It’s ok that you haven't completed a 10,000 piece jig-saw puzzle. Ignore those who are posting that they are baking cakes, writing novels, recording podcasts and ignore those who are complaining that they can’t bake cakes, write novels or record podcasts. They’re on their own journey. Cut out the noise..

Know that you are not failing. Let go of all of the futile ideas about what you ‘should’ be doing right now. Instead, focus on your physical and psychological security. Your first priority should be on taking care of you and securing your surroundings. Stock your pantry with sensible essentials (that includes toilet paper, but food too), clean your house, organise a dedicated work space and make a coordinated family plan. l Have conversations with your loved ones about preparedness and contingencies. If you have a family member who is a front-line or essential worker, redirect your energies and support them as a top priority. Identify their needs, and then meet those needs.

Irrespective of what your family unit looks like, you’ll need a team in the weeks and months ahead. Come up with a plan of activities for social connectedness - while maintaining physical distancing - with a small group of family, friends, and/or neighbors. Identify the elderly and the vulnerable and make sure they’re included and receive the support they need to maintain physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.

The best way to build a team is to be a good teammate. Take the initiative to ensure that you’re not alone. If you don’t put this psychological infrastructure in place, the mental, emotional and spiritual challenges of physical-distancing and potential self isolation and quarantine measures will be crushing. Build a sustainable and safe social unit now.

Shift 
“Start where you are. Distant fields always look greener, but opportunity lies right where you are. Take advantage of every opportunity of service.” - Robert Collier

Once you’ve established yourself and your team, you’ll feel more stable, your mind and body will adjust, and you’ll begin to crave more demanding activities. Human beings, by nature, are incredibly resilient. Given time, your brain will reset to new crisis conditions, and your ability to do higher-level work will resume.

This mental shift to ‘stabilize’ will help you to return to being a great partner, friend, sibling, colleague, neighbor even under extreme conditions. But don’t rush or prejudge your mental shift - it will take time to transition to the new normal. A post I recently saw on Instagram: "Day 1 of Quarantine: ‘I’m going to meditate and do body-weight training.’ Day 4: *just pours the ice cream into the pasta*" — it’s funny but it also speaks directly to the issue.

Now more than ever, we must abandon the performative and embrace the authentic. Our essential mental shifts require humility and patience. Focus on real internal change. These human transformations will be honest, raw, ugly, hopeful, frustrating, beautiful, and divine. And they’ll be slower than many of us are used to. But therein is the opportunity and the growth. Be slow. Let this distract you. Let it change how you think and how you see the world. Because the world is our work. And so, may this tragedy tear down all our faulty assumptions, rid us of our bad habits, and give us the courage of bold new ideas.

Flow
“In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.” - Robert Collier

On the other side of this shift, as you embrace and accept a new normal, your wonderful, creative, resilient brain will be waiting for you. When your foundations are strong, build a weekly schedule that prioritizes the security of your home team, and then carve out time blocks for different categories of your life. Do the easy tasks first and work your way into the heavy lifting. Wake up early. The Zoom yoga classes, meditation and cake baking will be easier at this stage.

With time, things will start to feel more natural. The adaptations you’ll notice in your life will also make more sense, and you’ll find yourself more comfortable about changing or undoing what is already in motion. New ideas will emerge that would not have come to mind had you stayed in denial. Continue to embrace your mental shift. Have faith in the process. And continue to support your team.

Think of it as a marathon. If you sprint at the beginning, you’ll be sick on your shoes by the end of the month. Emotionally prepare for this crisis to continue for the long term, followed by a slow recovery. If it ends sooner, be pleasantly surprised. Right now, work toward establishing your wellbeing and productivity, under sustained conditions.

Of course, there will be a day when the pandemic is over. We’ll hug our neighbors and our friends. We’ll dance in the streets, embrace nature and the outdoors. We’ll return to our offices and parks and coffee shops. Our borders will reopen to freer movement. Our economies will one day recover.

Yet we’re just at the beginning of that journey. For most people, our minds haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that the world has already changed. Some of us are already feeling distracted and guilty for not being there enough for our family, friends and colleagues or using their time in isolation for bursts of physical and creative productivity. All of that is noise and denial - and right now, denial only serves to delay the essential process of acceptance, which will allow us to reimagine ourselves in this new reality and take the steps to move toward it.

So let’s keep going, everyone. Remember, on the other side of this journey of acceptance are hope and resilience. We will know that we can do this, even if our struggles continue for years. We will be creative and responsive, and we’ll find light in all the nooks and crannies. We’ll learn new recipes and make new friends. We will have projects we cannot imagine today, and we’ll inspire strangers we’ve not yet met. And we’ll help each other. No matter what happens next, together, we will be ready to move forward.




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Robert Collier (1885 – 1950) was an American author of self-help and New Thought metaphysical books in the 20th century, researching and writing about the practical psychology of abundance, desire, faith, visualization, confident action, and personal development. 

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Notes from Isolation - Week 1: Doing my bit "te-quil-a"​ virus and flatten the curve

What a week. Where do I begin?  

My week actually started earlier this month when the promise of sand, sunshine, and margaritas beckoned so I flew down to Mexico for a short break. Fast forward two weeks, and I find myself back in Canada, with a fading tan and kicking off a second week of self-isolation, wondering if my last shot of Mexican tequila was a symbolic last hurrah, as I now do my part te-quil-a virus or, at the very least, flatten the curve.  

If you know me or have been following my posts for a while, you’ll know that I normally try and look at the positive side of life (sorry-not-sorry). I’m usually a glass-half-full type of person and as I get older, I find myself even more so. Today, amidst the whirlwind of hysteria, scaremongering, propaganda, conspiracies and fake news I’m doing my best to take the route to search for the seemingly silver lining and for opportunities to express gratitude.  And despite the facts that are being presented to us today, as events and updates unfold by the minute, hour and day, there remains opportunity for this. I’m grateful for this.

Let’s start with opportunity. This is a time for us to practise stillness, to get beyond what we initially recognize as boredom and slow down, reassess and re-evaluate what’s important. Check in with ourselves, with others, read more, write more, innovate more, catch up on the ever increasing load of adulting we’ve been putting off – the bane of everyone’s life: life admin. Spring clean (in the current climate spring-cleaning to a much more clinical degree with something incredibly antibacterial, at least twice). Taking stock; out with the old, and making an effort to introduce less ‘new’. Becoming more resourceful and less wasteful. Understanding the true value of ‘things’. There’s something mentally cleansing about the physical act of streamlining – tidy room, tidy mind.

It sounds great doesn’t it?

Perhaps this is an opportunity to clear the ever-growing backlog of “stuff” that work and social life excuse us from ever getting around to. Not an envelope left to open, not an email left to file, everything unnecessary out of the way, space made for the things you do use and things you love. Knowing where each of those things are. Heaven.

Perhaps this is a chance for us to breathe. A chance for our planet and our world to breathe. A noticeable decrease in air pollution. In noise pollution. A chance for wildlife to flourish. I’m not a forestry or conservation expert, but I have seen ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ and it reminded me of how we can course-correct.  And I watched ‘Peanut Butter Falcon’. (You must watch Peanut Butter Falcon. Please. With all the time you have on your hands I’d recommend it - I haven’t seen anything as warming or fulfilling in ages. Watch it twice.)

I digress. This is all great, if it’s a luxury you’re afforded. But I realize that for many of us it’s not.

There are many of us who can’t sit this out at home on Duolingo learning a new language (¿Tienes papel higiénico?), picking up a past hobby and strumming on a guitar, doing life-art classes in our living room, or signing up to a multitude chef masterclasses in an attempt to become the cook you were never destined to be.

That rainy day that we were encouraged to save for? Guess what folks, it’s here. And unfortunately it’s not just a day. A large part of today’s uncertainty is that despite the many ever-changing predictions about how long this will last, no one actually has a bloody clue. What we do know is, "…that the present is pregnant with the future.” Cheers for that Voltaire.

I sit here eating the final crumbs of Doritos rations whilst still in my pj’s at 1pm. I realize it’s Mothers Day in the UK as I scroll through a bitter-sweet social-media feeds of elderly Mum’s separated from children and grandchildren by the double-paned windows of their care-homes and the screens of technology many are largely unfamiliar with. I’m reminded that there are people who were in isolation long before it was advised. Elderly without family, people with immobility issues, crippling anxiety, agoraphobia, people who felt alone amongst the ever increasing population; people bullied or who feel alien amongst their community, those who feel isolated because of a lack thereof.

Then there are the psychological effects. The fear of catching the disease, the fear of our loved ones catching the disease. The stress of not knowing how to cope with whatever problems this pandemic will present. The frenzy it’s sending ill-informed and panicked parts of our society into is seeing us descend into Black Friday / IKEA sale-like mania. Videos of fights breaking out in grocery stores are making their way onto Instagram or being shared on Facebook make for anxious and difficult watching. You’d hope the idea of isolation would encourage standing still and taking a deep breath, a greater humility and more care for one another, a rise in localism and a strengthening of community. Not fighting over toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

As the number of cases rise, sadly so do the deaths – the most vulnerable and most susceptible being those already suffering with other illnesses and the elderly. In a world that often seems to lean towards prioritizing the lives and wellbeing of those who are well, will this be a time that reminds us that those less well, fortunate or capable deserve an equal standing in society? The world could do with a bit more altruism. The people making a real difference are those making themselves vulnerable in order to care for those in greater need. These are the real heroes - the doctors, nurses, healthcare and social workers, police officers, firefighters, and already under-paid and over-worked, will be called upon further. The importance of services already under strain, understaffed and underfunded will surely be highlighted. But when all is said and done and we return to whatever normal will then be, will this be remembered? I hope so.

As I type, laws are being passed to halt mass gatherings and I can’t help but think about the old sayings ‘Strength in numbers’ and ‘Together we stand, divided we fall’. How do we come together when we quite literally cannot?

I started this blog saying that I was a glass-half full type of person and yet I feel like everything I’ve touched on thus far is ‘doom and gloom’. I’ll get to my point. The silver lining. Ultimately it comes down to a simple idea. The way to feel positive emotions in these uncertain times is by embracing the vulnerability we all feel at the moment – and don’t run away from it.  You can endure struggle.  And the best way to tackle complicated, multi-faceted problems is by doing it together, in teams. In fact, going-it-alone is probably the worst approach. Given our “physical-distancing” restrictions, we just have to be a bit more creative in what that means. The power of technology makes this easier. #InItTogether

While we are physically separated from each other it’s critical that we maintain connection. And the key to connection is being open with each other. Helping each other. Asking for help.  And thinking of each other. We connect by simply being our true and authentic selves with each other – our family, friends, colleagues, and communities.

Right now, more than ever, I’m seeing what the power of vulnerability unlocks in all of us. In fact, this is the time where the bonds of connection become so incredibly powerful.  When we have the courage to check-in on each other, even when it feels like stepping across sometimes  unspoken “professional line”; when we demonstrate kindness and compassion as the norm for the workplace; when we look for opportunities to help each other.  This is how a culture of vulnerability maximizes connection when we are all apart.

So, I guess that’s where this blog ends, with a question, or with a leaving thought…

In a world post COVID-19, after having jumped out of our hamster wheels and having reconnected with the real world and with our vulnerabilities, will we be able to carry on forward having broken the all of the habits which make us ugly and broke our planet – our excessive, wasteful nature; our greed?

One thing I hope is that when all this is over, the world will have remembered what actually matters, and be a place that’s just a little bit kinder. And for me that’s the silver lining.

For any front line workers – doctors, nurses, healthcare and social workers, police officers, firefighters, grocery store workers, pharmacy workers, food-bank volunteers – reading this post, I want you to know that you’re our heroes right now.  You are causing gratitude to spread faster than this virus ever will. Thank you for your courage.

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