More self-determination through corona – are you kidding?

How are we gonna deal with this?
About two weeks ago the shutdown was pronounced and only three days after that, the lockdown came. After schools have been closed and people were asked to work from home whenever possible, all restaurants, hotels, hairdressers, gyms and wellness centers as well as all the stores that were not only providing basic services had to close their doors. What was impossible to think of just a few weeks ago is now reality.

“Stay home!”, is the new slogan that tells us what we have to do these days. Only people who have to do some grocery shopping, go to the doctors, to the pharmacy or to work, or are helping others to do these things, should leave the house. We are allowed to go for a walk to get some fresh air and of course to walk our dogs. But only briefly and, if possible, alone, or with someone who lives in the same household.

It’s an incision in our daily lives like we have not seen it since world war two. Many of our democratic rights have been restricted. Assembly ban, going out ban, school ban and even restrictions on what we can buy.
You may ask yourself, how can she speak about more self-determination, in a time where our daily lives are so externally determined like never before. A good question.

For everyone this is an unbelievably hard time. Parents, who suddenly have to do home-schooling with their kids and ask themselves how they should do that. Men and women, who have to do home-office and don’t know how. Teens are frustrated, because they had to give up their socializing and parties without any notice. Old folks, who might have been a bit isolated already before, are forced to stay inside and are afraid to grow lonely even more. And people who suffer from chronic disease suddenly must be afraid to die from a virus they have never heard before. How the heck shall we handle all this?

Yet, after two weeks of this reality, something like a new daily routine has settled in. Sure, we are still sitting at home and are irritated about the fact, that we cannot leave the house and that everything we knew is different now.

But maybe we also started to notice, that we suddenly have more time, that things finally slowed down a notch and that we can still do many things we could before. Lots of groups have formed through social media who offer to help and who are rich on ideas and creativity and we can dispose of our time at home freely. Sure, we have to do home-office, look after the kids, do home-schooling, try not to get on each other’s nerves and every day more bad news are pouring in.

More freedom
But we are also less externally determined. It starts already in the morning. We can get up when we want to. Maybe this is an hour later than it was before, maybe just a few minutes, but those minutes make the difference. We can also stay in bed for a little while after waking up, instead of jumping out of it as usual, because we don’t have to go somewhere, don’t have to catch a bus or a train or avoid rush hour.

We can decide whether we want to have breakfast in our pajamas or whether we want to get ready first. If we feel like it, we can also stay in our pajamas all day, because only our kids and partners will see it and they don’t care. We can also do some stuff first if we want to and have breakfast afterwards or we can skip it altogether if we are not a breakfast person in the first place, because we can get something to eat any time we want. There are no rules. Maybe we also want to do a little meditation first or another nice little morning ritual for which we usually don’t have time.

After that, we can start doing what we have to and want to get done on this day. Here too we have a choice in which order we want to do it and when we want to take a break. Those of us who have a room all to ourselves to do home-office while our partner is looking after the kids, maybe even can get more things done in less time than at the office, because there is no boss or co-workers or even a radio, which is wailing all day long, to distracts us.

The home-schooling too we can organize in such a manner and time that will better fit the kids age and character and maybe they will even have a little fun. Surely this will motivate them to keep up with the assignments they get from school more than just a week.

We can cook lunch together if we want to or let our partner do it for us. If we don’t belong to these lucky ones, we can still ask the kids to help and this too can be a fun hour of home-schooling in which they can learn something about nutrition and how to prepare it. We can then enjoy eating the meal together, because no one has to rush out again or isn’t even there, because the tight schedule is not allowing it.

Because no one has to take anyone else somewhere or pick someone else up, it doesn’t matter when we do the chores around the house and we might even get a little help with that too from our kids and partners.

Because all the external appointments are cancelled too, we don’t need all day to get to the end of our usual to-do list and finally have time to read a good book again, do some arts and crafts and paint with the kids, read something to them or take them for a walk.

Since the time outside is limited too, we are quickly back at the house and may now even have time to finally clear out that cellar, paint that room we wanted to paint for a long time or actually look at all the pictures we took with our phones over the last years. We might even create a photo album with them or start to do Christmas presents with the kids. When do we have more time to do that than now?

What habit from this time do you want to take into your future?
I’m aware that things are not like this for everyone. For a lot of people corona virus means additional stress. A lot of people are working out there, so that we can still get the most essential things done and who are working around the clock to care for the sick people, not seldom fighting for their patients’ lives. I want to say a huge THANK YOU to you all, who are not staying at home and are fighting this disease on the front lines, working till exhaustion.

But we, how have to stay home at the moment can maybe, despite of all of this craziness, appreciate this self-determination a bit as long as it lasts. Did we even realize how much we were driven by external forces before? Or were we just functioning because we thought that was what was expected or because a different routine was simply unthinkable? Maybe now, that we suddenly are a little more self-determined, we realize that we want to take one or the other habit into our daily lives in the future, when everything “is back to normal”. Since the world after the corona virus will not be the same as it was before, we might as well change some other things too whicht will benefit ourselves and our families. It’s gonna be different after this. But whether it will be a better world than it was before is our choice. We have to stay home at the moment, but we still have the freedom to help shape our future. In the time we got at home now, we can carefully think about what kind of world we want to live in when all of this is over.

What habit from this time do you want to take into your future?

Free get to know

Coachings