Take a Break
I’m off this Labor Day weekend. (I wrote this little ditty last week.)
Whether or not our work is paid, we all need breaks. Taking time for ourselves is an essential part of health. Downtime is also the birthplace of creativity and calm.
To me at least, honest introspection is required for doctoring, parenting, and maintaining healthy relationships. How could I possibly counsel other people without intermittently gazing inward and taking a dose of my own medicine? So lately I’ve been working on my own internal self-inventory — cleaning out my mental closet — by processing the last 18 months, trying to accept the bad stuff, and leaning into the good.
I actually lived two metaphors last week:
I started to declutter my *actual* closet, bagging up old clothes for Goodwill, rediscovering my favorite black pants (balled up in the back corner!), and realizing I’ve got some great threads — but also some doozies.
While walking my dog on Friday, I came upon an injured baby bird on the sidewalk, unable to fly and seemingly separated from its mother. Leo (our rescue pup) was nonplussed. As we waited for Animal Control to arrive, I couldn’t help thinking about our own vulnerabilities as we’re tossed from our nests into this brave new world: feathers rumpled, wings clipped, wistfully chirping for someone to listen.
The pandemic has provided the ultimate stress test for our collective psyche. Having written extensively about COVID-19 for 18 months, and with my finger on the pulse of — and sometimes directly pressed into the electrical socket of — the heated public discourse on COVID, I’m increasingly aware that people need help managing uncertainty itself. At least I do.
Understanding the complex landscape of COVID is hard (even for medical folks!); reflecting on our internal worlds is arguably much harder. In other words, it’s almost easier to exist in a state of constant agitation — in relentless pursuit of answering the unanswerable — than it is to sit with the discomfort of accepting the unknowable.
Here are some tips to find calm amid chaos:
Be kind to yourself. These are hard times! Tell your inner critic to take a vacation, and invite some self-compassion to your table.
Download a meditation app — like Headspace, Calm, 10% Happier, or Insight Timer — and try to weave a mindfulness practice into your routine.
Get outside in nature. The clouds and sky haven’t a clue we’re still in a pandemic. Enjoy their shape-shifting beauty. Breathe in their blissful ignorance.
Move your body. It doesn’t have to be formal, fancy or fanatical. Even a 10-minute walk does a body good.
Connect with friends and loved ones. We need each other more than ever these days. Try to listen more and talk less. Forgive, forget, and forge ahead with important relationships. You’ll never regret taking the time (or the high road) with people you love.
Coronavirus isn’t going away — nor are our vast social, emotional, and medical vulnerabilities. So I’ll continue to write about COVID-19; you’ll also hear more from me about the inseparability of physical and mental health, reconceptualizing what it means to be healthy, and practical tools to optimize your health and well-being. After all, the pandemic has exposed the critical importance of caring for our underlying health.
I wish you a relaxing and restorative Labor Day. I will check in next week.
Until then, be well.
P.S. In case you missed my last two posts about COVID-19 itself:
This one about breakthrough infections, booster shots, and COVID testing, and
This one about natural immunity, our sophisticated immune system, and a familiar emotion: anger.