Lockdown: Lesson Learnt

It’s very easy to want to completely forget the last 4 months, it seems most people’s default mentality around lockdown was that it was a complete waste of time. Whilst your social life may have taken a hit, I have observed the last 4 months having various impacts on people, some positive and some negative.

In my opinion, the biggest indicator of these experiences being positive or negative, was the individual’s ability to adapt to change. Here are my thoughts below, but above all, I encourage people to reflect on their own experiences, draw their own conclusions and evolve from their own learnings.

“Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realise this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.” – Henry Ford

A lot of things in life will hinge on your ability to adapt, to be agile, to be able to roll with the punches, to be able to adjust to change, even if there isn’t an end in sight. In fact, especially when there isn’t an end in sight.

This one is close to home for me, being susceptible to catastrophising and excessive worrying, when something is not in my control, or something that I am not particularly familiar with (i.e., a global lockdown) I tend to struggle to go with the flow and be “agile”.

But it has been in recognising that most of the fruitful things in life are often just over the hill, or mountain of unfamiliarity, that I have almost gravitated toward these scenarios and situations instead of moving away from them.

It’s human nature to struggle with change, we are creatures of habit, most of us love the familiar and the comfort of our western lives and rightfully so. But this long-term comfort can come at a cost; the inability to welcome, accept and work with and not against, change.

I get it, these circumstances are rare, why should we have to adapt to something that will likely never happen again, this isn’t normal… its not normal to be unable to leave your house or not be able to visit family.

But in my opinion, it is this line of thinking that is peoples undoing.

In this specific circumstance, it was the working from home (or not at all), the closing of businesses, the lack of social interaction, not seeing family members, the inability to get a sweat on at the gym or the fact you couldn’t suck the froth off a couple of cold ones at the local with your mates. These were the stressors and some (not all) of the reasons people were struggling.

No one knew when it’d be over, but the point is, it didn’t matter.

“Change is never painful, only the resistance to change is painful.”

If we can approach stressful and unknown situations with a more progressive and growth mindset, we are better able to identify potential opportunities and positives in each situation. Life’s always going to throw curveballs at you, its never going to be smooth sailing. You will find yourself dealing with stressors every single day, some bigger than others, from your car breaking down to getting fired.

These situations will vary and so will your reaction to them, but one thing is for sure, there will always be something to learn. That’s of course if these situations are approached with this perspective.

The intention is to not be completely submissive and give up because life is always going to have components that suck. It’s to recognise that there will be circumstances where things will be difficult, but this does not automatically mean we have to suffer.

Often approaching situations with this growth mindset will result in more opportunities and lessons that you can learn from and progress.

For most people the last 4 months was a good test of this ability. People found themselves having more spare time, some businesses closed, some people struggled to find work, what was your struggle? And what did you do about it?

If you had more spare time, what did you do with it?

If your work was affected, did you adapt and change how you were doing things?

If you were spending less from not going out or on holidays, did you find something to spend it on, or did you save and potentially put it towards an investment?

Or was your time spent watching daily press conferences, trying to predict the numbers, and not accepting the current situation?

Hopefully the lockdown landscape is in the rear vision mirror. But rather than looking at this period as a waste, I encourage you to reflect on how you handled the curveballs that were being thrown. If you found yourself resisting the change, maybe this is a topic that you could look into further, the philosophy and learnings of stoicism seems to have some great application in todays world.

*p.s. the intention of this post is not to make you feel guilty, or reinforce “grind culture”, where you must always be doing something productive. It’s to encourage reflection and for you to learn from your experiences. It’s okay to do nothing sometimes; Netflix can be a good tool to unwind, but all in moderation.