What You Will Learn About Yourself During COVID-19

COVID-19 has forced change upon us all without our permission. Many are forced to work remotely from home, others have lost their jobs, still, others are put in harm’s way performing essential services looking after those infected with the coronavirus.

Here’s what you will learn about yourself during COVID-19.

The New Reality

A new reality has set in. Your job security has been violated. The way you work has changed with those totally unprepared to create a dedicated space to work from home. Parents previously relied on teachers to school their children, they now have to homeschool their children. This new reality has brought up a multitude of emotions including sadness, frustration, despair, anger, hope, and more.

What happens when you are forced to change without your permission is you enter the change cycle. It’s the same type of grief you experience losing a loved one.

The Change Cycle

Being forced to face the reality of this pandemic has placed you in isolation. You can longer physically spend time with your friends. In some cases, grandparents can longer see their children or grandchildren. Colleagues can no longer interact with their coworkers. Feeling isolated creates loneliness as you come to grips with this new reality.

Shock and Denial

When you felt safe and secure you were enthusiastic, productive, and highly committed to what was your normal. What you may have underestimated, is the toll the coronavirus has taken on you and your family.

There is no more excitement in your life or something to look forward to like a vacation, a promotion or discretionary spending money. You can’t go to the movies or go out to dinner or socialize with friends. At first this comes as a shock then you go into denial. “This can’t be happening,” you say to yourself.

Anger, Frustration and Fear

As you grasp this new reality and are faced with challenges you underestimated, you enter the second stage of the change cycle. You become angry and frustrated and fear what the future will bring. “Why did I lose my job? Why do I have to remain in isolation?” It becomes more frustrating as you deal with how things changed overnight. This makes you angry and you feel disillusioned. You begin to fear what the future will bring.

Doubt and Depression

By continuing to resist the change forced upon you, self-doubt creeps in. “Will I ever get through this crisis?” you ask yourself. You lose motivation wishing you could wave a magic wand and be living life as normal again. You may even fall into depression regressing back into limiting beliefs wanting to return to your comfort zone. You don’t want to take responsibility for your life instead you want someone to save you.

Acceptance

It’s not until you reach this stage of the change cycle you realize, for your life to change, you must adapt and change. There is no magic wand that will instantly change the world around you. Any change has to come from within. Now you focus on letting go of the past and accept both you and the world is in transition. No one knows what the future holds post-COVID-19 if and when life will get back to normal as you knew it.

Acceptance sets in. You accept the status quo for the moment and acknowledge there will always be challenges ahead.  How you respond brings you to a split-second choice.

Choice

At this point on the change curve, you have a choice. Explore your options for the future or give up. There is an impact to making this choice. Ask yourself, by giving up, will you live a life of regret? 

The alternative is to have faith that things will get better.

Victor Frankl is a celebrated Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. He’s best known for his 1946 memoir Man’s Search For Meaning, a meditation on what the gruesome experience of being imprisoned in Auschwitz taught him about the primary purpose of life; the quest for meaning. This he believed is what sustained those who survived the concentration camps, having something to live for. A purpose. A vision beyond the walls of Auschwitz.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

He often cites Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how.”

Ask yourself the questions, “What can you do now to create a future you want? What is your vision for the future beyond COVID-19?”

Self-Reflection

By choosing to look towards the future and not live in the past or dwell on the present, you enter the realm of self-leadership, self-awareness and self-management. You become aware in order to succeed you must continue to develop the skills needed to set a new path forward. This means in your mind’s eye, you need to create a vision for the future that overcomes this new reality. By doing something now that impacts a more successful future, you will start to build momentum as you come through this pandemic.

Set goals and follow through on each of your goals however small they may be, knowing, when you achieve each goal, it’s a step towards freedom.

Commitment

Now you are entering the finals stage of the change cycle, it’s time to recommit to your future journey. You examine in more depth what it means to lead yourself, reflect on your belief system, make any necessary adjustments needed to create a future of your choosing starting now. You begin to manage yourself more effectively, regain any lost momentum, and stay on step ahead taking back control of your life.

Regain Momentum

As the architect of your future consider this. As a train gathers momentum and travels at full speed, it requires about 600 feet to stop, the length of two football fields. Compared to this, a freight train traveling at about 55 miles per hour may take the length of about 18 football fields to stop. Imagine the energy it takes for a train to gather that momentum again from a standstill.

This is the same for you. If you come to a complete stop and allow the coronavirus to consume your life, when we all recover from COVID-19, you will have lost precious time.

At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, water boils. The difference is one degree. At 33 degrees water falling from the sky is called rain. At 32 degrees the rain becomes snow. The difference is one degree. What if you worked on improving 1% every day? The impact would be compounded over a period of time and time will magnify your results setting yourself up for a future beyond COVID-19.

On a Final Note

Understanding the emotions you are going through when change is forced upon you helps you deal with more changes to come, post COVID-19 as a new reality sets in.

Momentum is what you need to achieve your personal, professional, and business goals. Send me an email on carolyn@strategez.com for a no-obligation chat about what is concerning you right now. Learn how to take yourself, your career, or your business to the next level and succeed.