I have a message of compassion for all the overachievers out there during the COVID-19 quarantine: Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Don’t castigate yourself for not being productive enough, for not having a good plan to go execute on, or for not moving forward in any meaningful way. It’s easy to underestimate the impact that anxiety is having on everyone right now.
Every one of us is scared. Every one of us is obsessing over the news, our social media feeds, the latest developments in the pandemic for hours each day. Every one of us is trying to get used to our new living situations and our new routines. Every one of us is worried about money, if we have enough, how bad the markets are crashing, whether we’ll keep our jobs, whether our businesses will close, what we’ll do if we lose our jobs and use all our money…
It’s OK. Sometimes we’ll get some things done, and sometimes we won’t. If we don’t get it all done, that’s OK. These are trying times. It doesn’t matter that we’re now home all the time. That doesn’t mean we’re suddenly going to turn into hyper-productivity machines. Working from home is not synonymous with productivity, especially if we’re not used to it. But it’s going to be OK. We’re going to be OK. We’ll figure it out in due time.
Putting pressure on ourselves helps nothing and can actually hurt us. It can disrupt our sleep. It suppresses our immune system, making us more susceptible to illness. It causes us to be irritable with others, which can hurt our relationships with others at a time when we need each other most.
Three Possible Scenarios
Here’s another way to think about it. There are three possible scenarios for how this pandemic could turn out for each of us.
- We catch COVID-19 and die.
- We catch COVID-19 and recover.
- We don’t catch COVID-19 at all.
Putting pressure on ourselves helps none of these scenarios. To understand why, let’s take a closer look at each one.
Scenario 1
If we catch COVID-19 and die next week or next month, would we want our final weeks on earth to be full of fear, stress, and anxiety? Would we want to spend these final weeks putting pressure on ourselves to be more productive? In the moments before we die, would we wish we had won more inconsequential arguments with our loved ones? Of course not. That’s absurd.
We’d want to savour every last second we have left. We’d want to spend our time telling our loved ones how important they are to us. We’d want to laugh, create, and see the beauty all around us. To read a book, play a game, be intimate with our lover. Or even just feed the birds and sit and watch them for a while. The most sensible emotional response to this first scenario isn’t anxiety, it’s love, joy, and wonder.
Scenario 2
But what if we catch COVID-19 and don’t die? Well, it might suck for a bit, but then after we recover (and can prove we have the antibodies), we’ll be free to leave the quarantine. We can go back to work, or find new work if we already lost our jobs. We can begin helping others. We can visit our loved ones and help them. We can donate plasma. We can buy groceries and run errands for the most vulnerable. This scenario ultimately has a happy ending for us personally, but, no matter how much we fret and worry today, there’s little that most of us can do to change the global pandemic unfolding outside our doors. The most sensible emotional response to this scenario isn’t anxiety, it’s love, relief, service.
Scenario 3
What if we don’t catch COVID-19 at all? Great! Lucky us! We can work remotely if we still have our jobs. If we lose our jobs, we can find new work or create businesses or side hustles. We can sell an asset (this is precisely what they’re for) or file for unemployment. We can take naps, go for walks, video call an old friend, plant a garden, write a comforting essay. This is the best case scenario, and we’re going to be perfectly OK! Hooray! Being hard on ourselves because we’re not doing or being enough won’t help. It’ll only make this fortunate path less enjoyable, and perhaps cloud our thinking so we’re unable to come up with creative solutions to our problems. The most sensible response to this scenario isn’t anxiety, it’s love, play, and gratitude.
Financial Oblivion
Ok, but what if the concern isn’t about catching it and dying or not dying, but rather personal finances and job security? It’s absolutely true we could lose our jobs, crash our businesses, and run out of money. But so what if we do? That’s not so bad. Trust me, I’ve been there before more than once, and it all works out for the best in the end. As the proverb says, if it hasn’t worked out for the best, it isn’t the end. In fact, I’ve grown the most as a person during those most challenging periods of my life.
Even if we do run out of money, we’ll figure it out. Even if we do lose our homes, we’ll figure it out. I’ve run out of money and lived in my car before. I’ve crashed a business and gone bankrupt before. It’s not the end of the world. Further, most of us have friends and family who won’t let us end up living under a bridge. Plus, the government will likely step in with more UBI payments, rent and debt moratoria, and other solutions before that happens for most of us. In fact, evictions aren’t even allowed right now in much of the world. Then, when the pandemic is all over and we’ve hit rock bottom, we’ll get right back to work building up our life and careers again, only in stronger, more resilient ways this time. It’s nothing but a setback, an adventure we’ll talk about for the rest of our life.
In a worst-of-the-worst case scenario, we lose our job, run out of money, get evicted, remain homeless forever, starve, and die, despite our best efforts. That could happen to a very, very small percentage of us. If the pandemic and recession get really bad, perhaps this could happen to a lot of us. Either way, that brings us back to scenario #1 above. That is…if there’s truly nothing we can do to prevent permanent homelessness and starvation, and we’re ultimately going to die as a result of this disaster, then how do we want to spend our remaining time?
Do Our Best, Then Let Go
Most of us don’t have the power to change the global pandemic and economic crash. If we’re stuck at home in a quarantine, there’s often little we can even do to change anything outside the walls of our home. There are large forces at work here, most of which are far beyond of our control. But our internal states of being are within our control.
All we can do is do our best. We’re all doing our best all the time, even when it sometimes feels like we could do more. We can always be present for the present moment. Focus on being here and now. Here is the only place we’ll ever be. Now is the only time there ever is. We can’t control the future or the external world, especially now as the pandemic and economic situation seems to be evolving and dramatically changing every few hours. Fortunately, we don’t have to control any of that. We’ll do what we can and not worry about anything else.
We can let go of knowing what the future holds. We can enjoy our days. If we get some stuff done, great! If not, no worries! We’re doing our best, just as we always are.
Let go. Let’s take a deep breath, turn off all our screens for a bit, and go feed the birds.