PART I
 
If COVID-19 has you staying home for prolonged periods, managing your time can be unnerving. Long spans of unstructured time can leave you feeling unmoored and restless. These feelings can slip into disorientation, malaise and hopelessness if not promptly and properly addressed.[1] Sometimes, we can feel as if we have lost our way.
 
Keep in mind; feelings of rootlessness are common during transitions like starting a family, beginning a new project or business, leaving a job for a career change, divorce, or retirement. Transitions prompt us to re-imagine our lives and our roles in society. COVID-19 presents societal upheaval – a type of transition from a public focus to a private focus. This transition, prompted by necessity, requires re-imaging our lives on many levels - from how we work to how we interact with one another.
 
We are accustomed to lives designed around societal structures, so COVID-19’s disruption is naturally perturbing. Normal routines are no longer sustainable; yet, routines are vital for a preserving our notions of purpose and progress. Routines provide a sense of coherence and continuity in our lives. Disruption indicates it is time to put on our design thinking caps to rethink our lives. If we want and expect different outcomes, we must reorganize our lives by creating structures and routines that serve our current realities going forward.
 
This is the first of two posts that address re-imaging our lives in light of the pandemic. In this article, we look at the importance of routines and norms, as well as start down the path toward reconsidering them in light of a designing new, not same old, life.  
 
The Importance of Routines – Norms
 
From birth, our lives and roles in society are organized and structured through behavioral norms formed and routinized by repetition and reinforcement (Hall & Trager, 1953). Norms become routines and institutionalized over time. Norms come from our families, communities, schools, and religious institutions through explicit and implicit rituals, rules, and behavioral expectations. These are our “roots” grounding us as we form our individual identities. Norms are also artifacts of societies that mold and delineate acceptable and unacceptable behavior at individual and group levels. They are the rhythm and cadence of cultures reverberating through our daily lives from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep. Through these institutionalized expectations and behaviors, our time is structured, bounded, and evaluated – even judged. Norms provide us bonds and boundaries of our relationships, thus coherence and continuity in our lives.
 
As members of groups, communities, and organizations from an early age, many of us follow norms without much examination. We rarely question norms or institutions from which they emanate, particularly when we see shared benefits are generally accepted and they appear to be broadly beneficial to us individually. For example, most of us see the wisdom in traffic laws – predictable order and safety.
 
When we adopt norms, instead of reinventing or resisting them, we conserve rather than waste our time and energy. We can apply our energies elsewhere, possibly in creative and productive ways. When we assume group norms to be a member of a community, we tacitly consent to let others prescribe the use of our time and schedules to some extent. For example, we arrive, participate, and leave school, work, church, and community meetings at specific times. If we want a job, we show up for the interview on time. If we want to fly to Hawaii for vacation, we arrive at the gate at the scheduled departure time. If we do not comply, then we lose the opportunity and have to make other arrangements, which is often inconvenient and time consuming. Compliance has its benefits – saving time and effort. Compliance also imposes limitations on individual freedom and expression – laughing loudly in a library raises eyebrows and elicits a, “Shhhh!”
 
Norms represent our commitments and obligations to others, as well as ourselves. Adults often have the tightest of schedules to manage their work, family, church, and community obligations. The decision to start a family comes with a shift in prioritizing work and children from their birth to adulthood. Shuttling children to school, activities, appointments, and events becomes a full-time job in addition to a “real job”. Adults caught between caring for young children while also caring for aging parents feel squeezed by dueling needs for their time and attention. After a lifetime of obligations, it can feel like life is running you instead of you running your life. Life becomes regimented you go on autopilot as you check the boxes on your “to do list”.  
 
Before we know it, decades have flown without much acknowledgement of our own personal experience of life’s ups and downs, as well as nuances, because “tomorrow is another day”. For many, losing perspective of who we are becomes problematic when what we are is limited to what we do for others. We become vessels for the expectations, hopes, and dreams of others but not for ourselves. Becoming mentally and emotionally numb is a risk. Extreme doing at our own expense that sacrifices our well-being becomes burnout (Maslach, Jackson, Leiter, Schaufeli & Schwab, 1986). Loss of identity derived from one’s sense of purpose sometimes accompanies burnout.   
 
Burnout forces self-reflection when our life’s purpose becomes blurred. Hence, the adage to slow down so we can see we are human beings not merely human doings. Pausing our lives, as we are now during COVID-19, can be unsettling as we reflect upon the truism that, for many of us, our lives are steered by others more than we might like to acknowledge. We may not want to accept the imbalance going forward. In a way, this pause is a gift, and opportunity to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones. The question we must ask ourselves is, “Do you want to stay stuck or do you want to expand your zone?”
 
If you are looking to stretch beyond your comfort zone and re-imagine your life during this pandemic, Part II will explore how self-compassion and self-care underpin designing healthy,  sustainable routines as a hero at home. Until then, check out the Resources, especially Take Time for your Life by Richardson. Stay tuned! Part II will be posted on May 1.

[1] If you have a sense of hopelessness, contact a mental health professional promptly, or contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
 
References:
Hall, E. T., & Trager, G. L. (1953). The analysis of culture. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED035325.pdf
 
Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., Leiter, M. P., Schaufeli, W. B., & Schwab, R. L. (1986). Maslach burnout inventory (Vol. 21, pp. 3463-3464). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting psychologists press.

Resources:
Take Time for Your Life, Cheryl Richardson (1998)

In my last post, we explored the balance between individualism and interdependence. Understanding the dynamics between these two existential ways of being is not only important during a crisis, but it is essential to living a robust life. When you understand when to act independently and when to act interdependently, life eases. It entails recognizing when acting for the benefit of the whole also benefits you as an individual, as well as when acting as an individual benefits you but may harm others. Ironically, when you exercise good judgment in this balance of solo versus in concert, you become less harshly judgmental of yourself and others. So, how does one get in tune with this delicate balance? Let’s start by examining needs at the individual and group levels. A good way to think about this is your personal needs and the needs of your partner, family, your neighborhood, your workplace, your community, your region, your country, and, yes, our shared home – earth.

Getting our needs met depends on not only having a healthy relationship with ourselves, but mutually beneficial relationships with others. Every day we negotiate these relationships to take care of our families, our communities, and ourselves. We have commitments to our individual wellbeing as well as the collective wellbeing as members of society. From a systems perspective, the matrix that yields relational integrity of individuals and communities relies on self-respect and mutual respect, much like interstitial fluid bathes tissues in the human body. One might argue that systems work best when the relationships between individuals and the communities in which they are members are functionally healthy. Functional health depends on constructive feedback that enables individuals and communities to evolve in ways that are mutually valuable (we will explore values in a future posting) in meeting individual and group needs.
Let’s explore needs, yours and your communities’, through two different lenses – a psychological lens and a philosophical lens. These two lenses are tempered by the realities of human development in childhood through adulthood. The first, psychological lens is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943), which he originally presented in his Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow has presented needs in a five-tier triangle (Figure 1).


Figure 1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
By FireflySixtySeven - Own work using Inkscape, based on Maslow's paper, A Theory of Human Motivation., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36551248





In the five-tier model, the foundations of the triangle are basic, physical, individual needs like air, food, water, and shelter. Moving up the triangle, physical needs shift toward relational needs, increasing in complexity like love, belonging, and esteem (self and from others).  In the 1970s, Maslow refined his model to include enhanced needs, which added tiers and distinctions to his existing model as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Maslow’s Expanded Hierarchy of Needs            Figure 3. The Chakra System

Figure 2. Sullivan, R.G., Dwyer, M.F., & Rogers, K.N. (2016). Conceptual frameworks for human interactions with public lands in the western United States. Argonne, IL: United States Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory.  Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sullivan6/publication/301698819_Conceptual_Frameworks_for_Human_Interactions_with_Public_Lands_in_the_Western_United_States/links/5723725008aee491cb3772ae/Conceptual-Frameworks-for-Human-Interactions-with-Public-Lands-in-the-Western-United-States.pdf
Figure 3. The Chakra System.
Nearents, J. (2014). The Chakras: A Practical guide to everyday life. Retrieved from: https://www.slideshare.net/JenniferNearents/chakra-basics

In Maslow’s expanded model, the needs progressively move toward personal growth, self-actualization, and transcendence. This progression recognizes and reflects wisdom from Eastern philosophies. Energy centers represent needs in the subtle body found in ageless meditative practices like Tantra and esoteric Hindu traditions, like kundalini yoga and the chakra system. The latter is illustrated as seven major energetic wheels, starting at the base and working upwards, as well as several minor ones. Figure 3 shows this system simply, so you can see the parallels with Maslow’s hierarchy – a bridge between psychological and philosophical models.

Why is understanding the bridge between these models important? The bridge illustrates the interplay between individual and collective needs, in the context of psychological and philosophical meanings that we can relate to and understand as dynamics in our daily lives. These models help us make sense of our individual experience and the shared human experience. While there is so much depth to explore in these models, one lesson is clear. In sum, we cannot get all our individual needs met on our own. In other words, no one is an island. Thinking such is foolish. If we are to progress toward attaining higher levels of needs, such as love, self-actualization, and legacy, we need relationships gained through communities. As much as we would like to believe the myth so many films, particularly Westerns, we are not ruggedly, independent cowboys out on the range. We develop individual skills we share with society for mutual benefit and reciprocity – safety, security, satisfaction, growth, and prosperity.

In this pandemic, it is critically important to remember that your individual safety depends on your consideration (your behaviors) of others’ well-being as much as others’ consideration of your health. View it as a version of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have done to you.” If you expect others to respect you, respect others. Right now, this is how we keep our communities safe for you and everyone. We all drive on the right side of the road not only because it is the law. It makes sense to avoid accidents and ensure traffic flow. Likewise, mindfulness of your behavior in public is vital to public health. Being a hero at home and using preventative measures when we must go out, we mitigate the burden on medical professionals and resources for survival. We really are in this together.  By doing your part, more of us will be here to celebrate when the sun finally breaks through the clouds.

For more information contact Mary at [email protected].

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.