thoughts on thriving in this time of the coronavirus lockdown

Last updated on 2 May 2020

This time is both challenging and a huge opportunity to re-imagine what you want life to look like. Here I muse on a couple things you can consider in not only living through but thriving in your days.

First, control what you can control. We can’t do anything about the lockdown. It’s a huge constraint on what had been normal in life. What you can control is your mindset, your routine and your activity.

Maybe you’ve heard of Carol Dweck, a psychologist who wrote an important book on how an individual can change and control their outlook on life through awareness and creating new habits in their thinking. I read the book a couple years ago and it proved to be a game-changer for me.

I’ve been reading a lot these days since being on coronavirus lockdown about how to thrive when our “normal” is changed. Here’s a good article on working from home, which so many of us are doing now: https://bit.ly/Houzzworkingfromhome

Two things I’m incorporating are routine and tapping into creativity everyday.

Routines include morning coffee-time with my wife Elin, a regular meditative morning walk, exercise, fasting until about noon, conscious eating, focused time on work, and free time to explore, read, and nap.

Last year I started a podcast called Interesting Humans. Little did I know how valuable it would be to me now. It’s part of tapping into something creative everyday. Not only with my podcast, but with writing, drawing, exploring music and with taking in whatever classes, seminars or other training I can get my hands on.

Creating focused blocks of time on my Google calendar allows me to be productive–and holds me accountable–when the whole world has been turned upside down. I want to look back on this time once we are past the coronavirus lockdown as a relatively positive and useful time. I’m setting goals for each day and being deliberate about meeting them. At night, I want to rest my head on my pillow feeling that it was a good day.

Here are some useful links that I’m paying attention to:

Exercise:

Nike Training Club app: https://www.nike.com/ntc-app

Adidas: https://www.runtastic.com/

Freeletics: https://www.freeletics.com/en/

Beachbody: https://bchbody.life/3dw36qm

GMB Fitness (movement): https://bit.ly/2UIaR3U

Fraser Wilson on Youtube: https://youtu.be/MWdhzyu2QZI

Online learning:

The Science of Well-being, Yale’s Most popular course ever free online: https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being

Free Ivy League online courses: https://www.classcentral.com/collection/ivy-league-moocs

Masterclass: https://bit.ly/masterclasswardblog