I’m Not Okay. (& That’s Okay, I Think).

I hear the refrain from the 2004 My Chemical Romance classic in my head more and more these days. To paraphrase Gerard Way, “2020, you wear me out.”

As dramatic as emo kids from the early 2K’s were (being the father of two daughters who went through pronounced teen emo phases, I can speak of this), their mindset seems oddly appropriate these days. Alone, isolated, rejected, with a persistent level of underlying anxiety, 2020 has turned a fair number of us into the equivalent of angsty teens longing for the days of wandering the mall looking for that perfect ‘Panic! At The Disco’ shirt at Hot Topic.

That said, unlike the leather and studded, mall rangers of 2007, adult humans today cling to the idea that things will get “back to normal” someday…soon (with the emphasis on soon). We have a baseline of normalcy that is the aggregation of patterns that have evolved over years, and though we frequently bitched about late planes, long lines, and shitty traffic — it was OUR normal, and we liked it!

As this matrix of crises (a pandemic, social unrest, a polarized nation, an election like none other, etc.) stretches deep into its third quarter, what does getting back to normal even mean? On what sort of timeline does that even happen? When we all went home in March we thought (or were told), “Meh, it’ll be a couple of weeks, and we’ll be back in the swing of things.” “It’ll be just like SARS or MERS or H1N1, it’s no big deal.” A couple of weeks became a couple of months, a couple of months became 2020. Now, many projections put that return to some semblance of normalcy into Q3 or Q4 of 2021. Let that sink in. That’s NEXT pumpkin spice season.

That Crisis Mentality Shit Just Doesn’t Work

When this all started, we adopted a crisis mentality, similar to what one experiences with a natural disaster or sudden onset of grief. Modern human beings are used to dealing with catastrophes that have a defined start and end time. We then get straight to rebuilding or healing our grieving hearts. 2020 is something altogether different, and that model just doesn’t work. Many clients and friends that I chat with these days are finding themselves in darker, more lonely places than they were in the early days of lockdown. Many of us are just running out of gas, and that’s concerning. To make matters more complex, we’re dealing with a multitude of crises, all of which are long-term, slow-burners that can eat our resolve pretty quickly. As I was thinking about this, I stumbled on this happy little article last week:

There is no getting ‘back to normal,’ experts say.

The sooner we accept this, the better.

Fun, hey? It’s not as bad as it seems though. We all know that negative headlines get more clicks, and there are certainly plenty of those to go around these days, but we humans are a resilient bunch. Many of us have found our old patterns built over years of repetition, blown up by this paradigm shift. Since March, we’ve developed new patterns — some good, some not so good. Just take a walk on recycling day and peer into a few of your neighbors’ recycling bins. I’m guessing you might discover cause for more than a couple interventions.

Despite the best of intentions, I’ve found myself in some pretty negative patterns over the last few months. Hell, some days I don’t have the energy to do anything. As a sufferer, I’ve spoken out about depression and anxiety for years, and adding 2020 to those elements creates a shitshow of epic proportions. In our work with clients we talk about William Bridges’ Transition Model, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs quite often. Maslow is interesting in that we used to measure progress up the pyramid in months and years.

Now, we’re measuring it, up and down, in hours. We are fraught with so much change these days, our processing of change has been thrown into complete chaos. We can be in “new beginnings” when we wake up, and have both feet planted in the valley of despair before lunch. On top of that we are supposed to work, be productive, participate in back-to-back ZoomTeamsMeetSlack meetings all day, stare at ourselves on camera and try to determine if our neck looked that weird in January, home school our kids, continually toss the cat off the desk, listen to our spouses work, and try desperately not to drink before 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Oh yeah, and take care of ourselves, fill our buckets, exercise, and for fuck’s sake, get outside.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right?

Okay, So I’m Not Okay, Now What?

So here we are. Seven months in, with no “return to normal” in sight. Psychologists telling us that we’re all better off if we just accept that and get on with our lives. How can we flip this situation, and embrace the gift that is this existential crisis?

Well, first we need to talk. Yeah, I know that nothing good comes after that expression, but seriously — we need to talk….about intentionality. With so many plates constantly being spun, it’s easy to just ride the wave on into Everything SucksLand. We need to make better decisions about well, pretty much everything these days. This article by the MIT Sloan Management Review shines the light on several of the insidious biases that creep into our thinking. Everything from Confirmation Bias to Normalcy Bias can get in our way. Just like “naming the emotion” that we’re feeling, calling into question whether or not these biases are plaguing (see what I did there?) our thinking gives us the luxury of making a choice.

Pick Some New Patterns

Yeah, habit formation is hard when we want to do it intentionally. It’s easy to just climb up on our emotional surfboard and let the current carry us where it may, but we’ve got to stand up, rub some dirt on our existential wounds, and get the hell back in the goddamn game.

It takes, on average, 66 days for new habits to become automatic. This is across the board, the amount of time it takes to replace old mental images with new ones. If you anchor these new habits to existing behaviors, it takes less time. If you make the habits tinier, it takes less time. If you celebrate the little victories each time you complete the Tiny Habit it takes even less time. I became a certified Tiny Habits coach/facilitator about 3 months into CovidTime, and I can attest. The Tiny Habits Method™ just works. Pick some new behaviors, write a Tiny Habits Recipe, and get to work! The format looks like this:

• After I (do something SPECIFIC that I already do) “Wash My Hands.”
• I will (do the new tiny behavior — something I can do in 30 seconds or less) “Do 10 crunches on my Fitball.”
• Then lock that habit in with a little dopamine-inducing celebration. “I will fist pump the sky and say ‘Fuck yeah!’”

“Life is not always what one wants it to be, but to make the best of it as it is, is the only way of being happy.” — Jennie Jerome Churchill

Take the Long View

We all know that “time heals all wounds,” right? Actually it’s more nuanced than that. Time actually kinda equals things out, it’s called Hedonic Adaption and you can get elbows deep in the theory by reading Sonja Lyubomirsky’s paper here.

Things that we find world-bending and overwhelming (from an amazing or shitty perspective) will even out mostly out over time. Humans are resilient, and barring severe traumatic events (death of a loved one, some severe illnesses, etc) and underlying psychological conditions, most people, most of the time will recover. Sometimes, these traumas actually can catapult our lives into different (arguably sometimes even more positive) states. There are innumerable stories of folks who have turned adversity into triumph….and that’s awesome, but let’s take it down a notch shall we? Delivering a crappy presentation on your Zoom call, sucking at something at work, or even that your kid failed out of online school — in the grand scheme of things isn’t going to matter (at least as much as we think it might in the moment).

Space & Grace

One of our clients uses the term “Space and Grace,” and I just LOVE this phrase. We need to give space and grace to those around us. We’re all dealing with 732 different crises at any given moment right now, and while not an excuse — it’s real. We also need to give ourselves a little space and grace here in the dumpster fire that is 2020. Acknowledge what’s actually happening in your brain, make some new Tiny Habits, and cut yourself a little slack.

15 years from now, we’ll all have some pretty messed up stories of our time in the Covid Era. But like all challenging times (or Forced Winters as Matthew McConaughey calls them in another damn fine episode of the Tim Ferris Show), we’ll look back, and hopefully talk about all the amazing things that happened. The extra time spent with our kiddos, the crazy innovation that came from this, how we learned what we were made of, how we grew up a little, and how surprised we are that our collective livers made it out alive.

Be well my friends, and know that it’s okay to not be okay, I am your Ally, and I’ve got your back.

Eric Spencer is an energetic speaker, author, human resources and leadership development expert. With over twenty-five years’ experience in companies ranging in size from start-ups to the Fortune 50, he has a rich set of experiences that help shape his down-to-earth approach to achieving real business results. His work with Morag Barrett and Ruby Vesely in the area of workplace relationships is central to their philosophy — “Business is personal, and relationships do matter.” Best Friends at Work: How an Ally Mindset Improves Your Happiness, Engagement, and Productivity” — Coming in 2021! Learn more at www.skyeteam.com. Follow him here and on Twitter @ericspencer1

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.