Heroes@Home: Managing Time and Focus

During this pandemic, the best thing we can all do, if possible, is to stay home, stay safe, and save lives. If anything, COVID-19 is teaching us is: YOU'RE a HERO by STAYING HOME.
If you are an essential member of a medical team, employed by municipal services (fire, police), utilites (e.g. water, power, gas, cable, communications), or delivery services, you likely don't have the option to stay home. Please know your critical work is appreciated. Words cannot express our gratitude for your dedication.
For those of us who have options, the most patriotic thing you can do to keep your community healthy is to consider how your actions impact the health and well-being of others and your loved ones. Stay home unless it's absolutely necessary for you to go out. When you do, protect yourself and others by taking precautionary measures recommended in your area. Here are some ideas for making the most of your home time.

Managing Time and Focus
The pandemic has put us in a love-hate relationship with time – too much versus too little. At first, having time on our hands presents opportunities to do things we have wanted to do but delayed. For some, we had warning with time to prepare when others affected early did not. That time filled quickly with demands of family, work, or filling out forms for unemployment, medical care, child-care, and other necessities of survival. For others, reaching out to help the neediest in our communities found us with not enough time. Even the busiest face occasional moments filled with dread. It is natural to be overwhelmed at times like these. Avoid being too hard on yourself. Developing your attention and mindfulness practices can help you appreciate aspects of life we overlook in our overbooked lives. Check out the self-compassion resources at the website, see https://www.maryedson.com/resources.html.

In the thick of a crisis, staying focused feels nearly impossible. It seems like distressing news is coming from all directions and it is difficult to tune-out when our loved ones need us most.  Finding time to re-balance is out of reach. Burnout is very real. We face the pressing question: What can I do to maintain some semblance of sanity? We can start by taking a deep breath (see more about this the previous blog post) and seizing the moment to appreciate the present and acknowledging to ourselves that we are not alone in this pandemic. People are reaching out to help one another, which fills the void when our leaders are unwilling or unable. So, we must take charge of ourselves. Mastering our own destinies in this time of crisis requires a degree of self-discipline tempered with self-compassion.  In sum, taking charges of ourselves means cultivating good judgment of when to have a plan and follow it, while recognizing when the plan needs to adapt to changes in the current environment. It means scanning your environment for changes and modifying plans to meet current and long-term needs.  These skills require individual and collective agility in ways we  have not faced historically. How did we get here and what is the path forward?

Balancing Individual Needs with Community Needs
In the United States, one of our beloved myths is we believe we are "rugged individualists," an extension of the "pioneering spirit" from the days of exploration and settlement of the country during its first two centuries. Think about Ralph Waldo Emerson's  essays on self-reliance. While the independent pioneer archetype serves us well in some regards, like all archetypes, it has its downside (Jung referred to is as the "shadow") too.  Healthy systems have balances of individualism and collectivism to leverage the best aspects of both while mitigating their inherent limitations (see https://corecounselling.ca/how-we-contribute-to-the-collective-shadow/). For example, competition leads to innovation in the best of circumstances; but competition can lead to anarchy in the worst circumstances.  An example of innovation is healing technologies like prosthetics. An example of devolution is William Golding's (1954) metaphorical Lord of the Flies. Understanding the propensities of the shadow help us develop ways to avoid archetypal extremes.

In other words, "there is a season" for both self-reliance and interdependence. They function in tandem and interact as feedback loops in systems. Knowing when to call on each of these requires good judgment and leadership. While we have little control over what is happening nationally right now, we can harness our own lives - using structure and self-organization to provide a foundation for survival while calling upon our relationships and networks for ideas and support in times of change and adversity.
Personally, finding the balance of structure and flexibility is uniquely your own process. We'll explore how to find your "sweet spot" for resilience in upcoming posts. Until then, remember, we are all in this together while standing six feet or more apart.