So far, the biggest takeaway I’ve gained from this pandemic experience has been the importance of adaptability. Through the past 2.5 months, I’ve learned to appreciate — on a much deeper level — this ability to create more than one solution to each problem and find more than one way to meet my own needs.
Like many people, I’ve developed reliable ways to get what I need and this pandemic with the resulting lifestyle shifts has reinforced to me that those old faithful methods are valuable but not infallible — sometimes coping and ultimately thriving in less than desirable circumstances requires some psychological flexibility.
In the early days of this isolation period, I began to feel the effects of being cut off from all the external places where I’d placed my reliance in terms of sustaining my emotional and mental wellbeing, my self-worth, and my overall feelings of success. It felt like things were crumbling within. I could feel my sanity begin to slip.
But daily meditation helped me to remember that I have the ability to be more flexible in my approach to myself, my life, and everything in it. I have the ability to recalibrate my expectations, reorient my perspective, and reconfigure my methodology for approaching each and every one of the challenges that come up.
This list I’ve created in my lifetime of what it takes for me to be okay and how to go about getting those things is not — and never has been — written in stone. I am not — and never have been — a one-trick pony.
As the weeks pass, I see the value of having more than one approach to maintaining my sense of self-worth and mental health. I understand the importance of not putting all my eggs in one basket so to speak. I appreciate the flexibility I have to create new pathways to obtain the support I need in my life.
And I can already tell that the refinement of this skill of adaptability, the sharpening of this tool of resilience in the face of such global challenge and change as well as the newly-reinforced sense of confidence it imparts is already going to be hugely valuable for me in every aspect of my life from this day forward.
Sometimes the thing that needs to change the most is me.