Pandemic Agility

Many of us have experienced loss, grief, guilt, overwhelm, distress, and confusion in recent weeks.  No two people are in the same situation and our world has become difficult, unpredictable and extreme.  Some have more downtime; others are working more than they ever have.   Here are two strategies to help us be our higher selves (climb back up Maslow’s Hierarchy)

1. Name it to tame it: Get specific and identify your feelings.   We often need motion to move negative emotions out.   What can you do to let them come without burrowing or stuffing them down?
2. Try Agility:  Leadership experts recommend we let some “best practices” fall away if they are not working in this situation.   Pinpoint the areas in your life that are tense/not working well and do some trials. Consider some fun, easy and playful experiments.  Here area few from clients prompted by the pandemic:

• Breakfast for dinner, every night– a mother with small kids
• Say “I don’t; know” on all food-kitchen related questions–a mother with adult “kids”
• If everybody is miserable, tear up the color-coded home school schedule and let the kids create their own learning
• Spend 90 minutes a day on self-care,  not including grooming
• Write a letter to my anxiety, breaking up with it, like a bad girlfriend
• Quarantine media
• Take care of yourself in the most basic way.  Sometimes, declaring victory on that is all we can expect to do–an ICU nurse in New York City

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All of life is an experiment.  —Ralph Waldo Emerson