Five ways to help make this time of isolation a more positive experience.
I have spent the last four years reasonably isolated as I worked hard to fix my health and bring myself back to life. There are many lessons I have taken from this time, but I would like to share five with you here while you may be isolated from your normal everyday life. I hope you find this useful and can take something calming from it.
Give yourself permission to stop trying to control everything. Some things you have power over and some things you don’t. It can be incredibly anxiety provoking to think you have to control and dominate everything. Sometimes in order to survive and thrive one has to swim with the current.
How can you make this time move your life forward rather than be a prison. This can be small, for example maybe you take time to reconnect with your music library, learn to cook five meals and of course you could use it to sling shot a whole new life direction. The real art is using your mind, emotions, energy and time to move something or anything forward in a way that suits you. By the way, this one art or we could call it a skill if learned and used regularly can radically change your experience of life.
Time to pull your genius out of you. Isolated time from your external life can really bring your attention back to you, your particular piece of life and the environment within you(thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc). Perhaps you have some genius within you that only now, when you are forced away from being distracted by daily life, can flourish and make itself known. What genius or unique thing do you have within you that can now be harnessed and worked on. It doesn’t need to change the world, although it might, but maybe it will change your world in the most beautiful way.
Time to look at your thoughts and emotions and address them. I hope this won’t sound too controversial as people seem to really like to avoid direct observation of their thoughts and emotions. In no small part because observation of them makes them seem bigger and take on speed. But, this can radically change the filters through which you perceive life. And that can make your experience of life much more pleasant and fulfilling. Please remember to be gentle with yourself. You matter and deserve your kindness too. Take a minute and try to observe your thoughts and emotions from one step removed from yourself. Take a mental step back and observe as if it were someone else. And very importantly, try to do so without judgement. Just see what is there. This simple act can help shine light on faulty reasoning and incorrect connections and conclusions. Try to identify what emotions you feel out of habit. See if you can realize you aren’t your emotions or your thoughts. This is an ancient practice that has been used all over the world and perhaps can be illuminating for you. Don’t dwell on these observations and don’t identify as these things aren’t you. Have some fun and play a bit. Ultimately, you are just shining a little light into yourself rather than dumping it all into the external world. It’s a nice little practice of self love.
This moment gives you time away from your daily life, that you probably will never have again, to change the momentum of your life. Most people are so caught up in everything happening and that which has already happened that it becomes very difficult to see where you are in relationship to the life you want to have. Now you have time to really check in with yourself mentally and emotionally and change the overall direction of your life. This time could be the greatest gift if you are willing to step back from yourself and look at your life with some new perspective. It may never happen again and it may be the difference between a life lived well and a life that is regretted.
I hope you find these little points and practices( they do need to be practiced to do much for you) illuminating and beneficial in this time. Naturally, all of these will be useful when life gets back to a more normal place, but now is a great time to work on them.
You are stronger than you know and you have more potential than you think. All the best...
