Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Lessons from the Pandemic

You wouldn’t be excellent the first time you tried pottery, so why would you expect to be excellent at your first pandemic? Here are some insights about our collective experience of COVID-19, how you can get through it, and how to grow from it

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By Geoff Dueck Thiessen, Regional Director, Winnipeg Member Centre

We’re now several months into this time of COVID-19. We have all likely been in many conversations about how disoriented, uncomfortable, and strangely fatigued we are.

Most everything in our lives has either been cancelled or significantly altered. We either have too much time on our own, or too much time with the same people.

Of course there are some upsides to this new way to living, and we are likely all trying to be brave and look at the silver linings. But we’re not likely to be able to land on any one spot of certainty for very long before something changes again.

I was looking for a way to think about this early on in the pandemic experience and stumbled upon it while listening to Dr. Brené Brown’s podcast on FFTs—“effing first times.” There’s never been an “effing first time” for us before like this pandemic.

Dr. Brown makes the case that

• We need to do new things to keep growing. Stop avoiding new things, and you stagnate as a person.

• New things are really hard, so hard that we often avoid them. So hard, they warrant the “effing” expletive. They make us feel incompetent (because we are) and present us with feelings that we’d rather not name, but need to name to regain power.

• COVID-19 is an FFT for all of us, together, at the same time!

• We can do this. But it’s super difficult. And because it’s super difficult, we will be tempted to either minimize how difficult it is, or avoid the lessons. Going through something extraordinary like the current pandemic really is a unique opportunity for us to grow.

The comfortable, dominant parts of our personality hide during this time of collective trauma, and it’s our hidden, or weaker parts that emerge. The reptilian part of our brain is being triggered into action—the fight or flight response—because it senses we might be in danger.

But it’s not likely or very possible that our higher reasoning brain and our reptilian brain can both function well at the same time. With COVID-19, our brain is trying to manage a type of trauma it has never been through before.

So, to help you manage, here are four things you can do to not only get through the experience, but grow from it:

Be honest about how difficult it is—it’s tiring, disorienting, boring, terrifying, and more. Find a way to express that, for example, by talking about it or writing about it.
Be gracious with yourself and others—it’s your first pandemic. You wouldn’t be excellent the first time you tried pottery, so why would you expect to be excellent at your first pandemic?
Embrace the part of this that holds the opportunity for growth. Remind yourself that you’re growing. Yes, it’s painful, but remember that you will one day look back and talk about the things COVID taught us. It’s teaching us that now!
“Go to the balcony,” as best-selling author and speaker William Ury advises. What he means is that you need step away from the situation to get some perspective.

If we apply Ury’s advice collectively, going to the balcony on COVID-19 provides us with five insights about how we are all experiencing the pandemic:

We are in our isolated lives trying to pretend we’re okay but secretly struggling.
We are sleeping poorly, checking our phones compulsively for COVID-19 news, and now also news from the crisis in the United States.
We are feeling more compassionate toward each other, and more tolerant when others make mistakes because we know they’re feeling what we’re feeling.
We fear for our loved ones living in another province and are finding new ways to connect with each other.
We are letting go of some bad habits, and starting new habits to get us through this.

The pandemic is an FFT for all of us, but so are the lessons: We can do this. It will pass. And it will change us if we let ourselves grow from it.

Lessons from the Pandemic

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