In many ways, it’s a thought that a ‘pause’ but­ton has been pressed on our lives, and is be­ing re­leased slow­ly. We may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a whole host of emo­tions dur­ing this time, such as anx­i­ety, ela­tion, ex­cite­ment, fear, wor­ry, anger or con­cern. We know that these are un­prece­dent­ed times for our gen­er­a­tion, and that long-term vi­sion is need­ed as things re-open slow­ly, since there is as yet no vac­cine avail­able against covid-19, and re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, it may take be­tween 18 months to 2 years for an ef­fec­tive vac­cine to be wide­ly avail­able. That means that mea­sures such as mask wear­ing in pub­lic, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and avoid­ance of large so­cial gath­er­ings are like­ly to be in place for the fore­see­able fu­ture.

As busi­ness­es and ser­vices start to open up slow­ly, we might face re­al chal­lenges such as bal­anc­ing work and child care/on­line school­ing, or main­tain­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing in the work­place. Oth­er le­git­i­mate con­cerns may be a con­cern about fi­nan­cial loss­es, job un­cer­tain­ty, or anx­i­ety about our in­fec­tion risk.

On the oth­er hand, if we choose to look at this in a dif­fer­ent way, what op­por­tu­ni­ties are there as we re­turn?:

Are there any new ways of work­ing we can adopt (flexi-time, work from home, or al­ter­nate day work­ing per­haps)?

Are there any new skills we can at­tain? Are there any on­line cours­es we can take which may broad­en our knowl­edge or im­prove our skills in the work­place? A num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty on­line short cours­es have been avail­able for free or at re­duced cost.

Is there any­thing we can do to de­clut­ter or sim­pli­fy our lives? The stay at home pe­ri­od may have taught us that we don’t ac­tu­al­ly need a lot of phys­i­cal stuff to be hap­py.

Is there a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion for na­ture? There’ve been many re­ports of clear­er skies, re­duced pol­lu­tion and the re­turn of wildlife world­wide. Per­haps there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to con­tin­ue to have an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for Moth­er Na­ture mov­ing for­ward.

Could we adopt new healthy habits? For in­stance, could we de­vel­op a small home gar­den and start grow­ing more of our own herbs, fruits or veg­eta­bles?

Could we main­tain clos­er fam­i­ly con­nec­tions? Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing doesn’t mean so­cial dis­con­nec­tion. Is there an op­por­tu­ni­ty to es­tab­lish reg­u­lar con­nec­tion with close fam­i­ly and friends, via reg­u­lar phone calls or so­cial me­dia?

One of my favourite exe

rcis­es is some­thing pro­posed by He­len Doyle (Forbes mag­a­zine), who rec­om­mends that we con­sid­er which as­pects of ‘nor­mal’ we want to re­turn to. In par­tic­u­lar, she pro­pos­es that we look at things in our lives in 4 cat­e­gories:

What new things will we keep? (eg shop­ping lo­cal, fam­i­ly movie night, hav­ing a herb gar­den or tak­ing a reg­u­lar out­door walk.)

What new things will we cease? (For ex­am­ple, per­haps our new-found TV bing­ing no longer serves us well.)

What old things will we re­in­state? (Maybe restart­ing our walks around the Sa­van­nah?)

What old things will we drop? (For ex­am­ple, did we have old ex­pen­sive habits or tox­ic re­la­tion­ships?)

Hav­ing con­sid­ered these, how do we move for­ward? Here are some tips:

Re­mem­ber self- care – this is an im­por­tant part of main­tain­ing our re­silience in un­cer­tain times. This in­cludes eat­ing healthy meals, ex­er­cis­ing and look­ing af­ter our bod­ies, get­ting enough sleep and so on.

Prac­tise self-com­pas­sion. This is new for all of us, and we won’t al­ways get it right, so be gen­tle with your­self.

Breathe, and take time to do what you need to re­boot when you can if you feel over­whelmed. For in­stance, do you need to lis­ten to some mu­sic, have a cup of tea, take a walk or read a good book?

Re­mem­ber what’s in our im­me­di­ate con­trol. We may not be able to con­trol when a vac­cine be­comes avail­able, but we can con­trol things that we do to keep our fam­i­ly safe such as hand­wash­ing or safe­ly man­ag­ing our sneezes and coughs).

Keep your sup­port net­works. Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing not so­cial dis­con­nec­tion! It’s im­por­tant to main­tain reg­u­lar con­tact with those who care about, whether that’s by sched­uled vir­tu­al date, Zoom par­ty, Face­Time or phone call.

Con­sid­er who you want to be? What have you learnt about your­self dur­ing the stay-at-home pe­ri­od and what char­ac­ter traits would you like to bring with you as you re­turn to ‘nor­mal’? Will you be some­one who in­no­vates or sup­ports oth­ers in need?

Con­sid­er if you can work in any new or dif­fer­ent ways. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has a num­ber of free we­bi­na­rs on re­shap­ing and re­struc­tur­ing your busi­ness dur­ing covid-19, avail­able at: https://cham­ber.org.tt/our­we­bi­na­rs/re­shape-your-busi­ness-mod­el.

Re­mem­ber most of all to look af­ter and be gen­tle with your­self, and con­nect with your sup­port net­works. If you feel you need ad­di­tion­al help, there are re­sources out there…for ex­am­ple, the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists have es­tab­lished a free ser­vice to sup­port peo­ple cop­ing with covid-19. More in­for­ma­tion is avail­able at www.psy­chol­o­gytt.org.

Dr Paula Robert­son

Mind­ful Kites