It’s been a strange year for everyone – unprecedented has been the key word for the last 12 months.
It feels like my life has completely changed and it’s taken some adjustment. I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions: feeling happy, relaxed, anxious and depressed at different points in the year.
While no-one wanted their 2020 to turn out the way it did, so much time on my own gave me a lot of thinking time and, on reflection, there have been some noticeable benefits. The slowing down of everyday life has led me to pay more attention to the little things. And in doing so, I probably learnt more about myself in the last year than the last 5 combined.
Here are 7 amazing things that I learnt during the pandemic.
1. Socialising gives me purpose
I am a natural introvert. I hate big group gatherings and having to be the centre of attention. If I spend a lot of time socialing, I need to factor in alone time to recharge and recover. In fact, I used to schedule time into my calendar where I would not meet anyone so I could come home and relax on my own.
Despite this, at the start of March 2020, I was feeling tired from my relentless busy diary.
So when I was first asked to work from home, it was a welcome change.
Suddenly I didn’t need to get out of bed early and waste two hours every day commuting. I could catch up on sleep and finally get around to some of my old hobbies and projects. I started learning Spanish and finally picked up my lion cross stitch that I started years ago and never finished.
I started lockdown upbeat: excited for all the alone time and to be able to focus on myself.
However, two months later, I had fallen into a dark place.
I felt depressed and had no motivation to do any of the fun projects I had started back in March. I was sick of always being on my own and there seemed to be no purpose to my life.
The only thing that made me happy at this point in lockdown was my scheduled zoom calls with friends. Interaction with others was the only thing that could make me happy. I came out of those calls refreshed with a little spark of inspiration.
When the country began to open up in summer 2020, I made a lot of effort to schedule in park meetups with friends and it ended up being a really lovely summer because of that.
The first thing I learnt during the pandemic was that despite being an introvert, I need social interactions to inspire me and give me purpose in my life. While other people drive me mad, other people are the main thing that makes me happy also.
2. How not to be a quitter
It’s hard to admit, but I have always been a bit of a quitter. I haven’t finished around 90% of the projects that I’ve started.
I’ve previously started two blogs that I eventually gave up on. I’ve been on countless diet and fitness plans, which worked for a small amount of time, but were unsustainable. I always seem to end up right back where I started. I tried drawing and calligraphy, buying expensive beginners guides and materials, but again, gave up after a few months when I wasn’t making any progress.
My motivation to do something comes on very strongly. I get consumed by the need to go all in on a new project or idea. However the motivation always leaves eventually and when it does, I can never keep up my focus. Once I inevitably stray from my plan, I tend to just give up all together. Because if I can’t stick to my plan 100%, what’s the point?
However, during the pandemic, I learnt a lot about why this kept happening to me, and what I was doing wrong.
In March 2020, I decided to start learning spanish on duolingo, after being inspired by a youtuber I watch. I set a goal to do 1 lesson each day which takes approximately 5 minutes.
Based on my past experiences, I assumed I would stop at some point, but a year later, I am still going. I never quit!
At first I didn’t question it too much. Surely I kept it up because it was easy. It was only 5 minutes a day.
However later that year I read the motivation myth by Jeff Haden. This taught me that in order to achieve your goals you must forget them.
This sounds counter intuitive, however the idea is that instead of focusing on the end goal, you focus on the process. That way you get success every time you complete what you need to do each day.
You enjoy the process and stop comparing where you are now, to where you want to be. Because if it’s a big goal, that is going to take a long time.
When I was dieting, for example, I kept looking at fitness influencers on instagram. No matter how much progress I made in 3 months, I still looked nothing like them. It was de-motivating thinking about how far I was from my end goal. Instead I should have been thinking more about the process and eventually the results would come.
Suddenly it made sense why I had been able to stick with my Duolingo Spanish. I had been focusing on the process. I enjoyed doing a lesson or two each day while I watched the morning news, and I wasn’t comparing myself to other learners or native speakers. It was not my aim to become fluent any time soon. I was just enjoying the now.
This might seem obvious to you. But it was an amazing revelation for me. I’m now working to frame all my goals as a process and see what I can achieve in the next year.
3. Its OK to go through phases
This might feel at odds with my second lesson about how not to be a quitter. But hear me out on this because, while to achieve goals you do need to be consistent over time, you can still be flexible and mix things up.
This is a lesson I learnt at the beginning of lockdown when I created a structured home workout plan. My plan consisted of three 30 minutes HITT sessions plus a couple of runs and one longer walk at the weekend (4 hours +).
At the start I loved it. I was bounding into my workouts and feeling really good about myself. But by week 8, I was starting to tire.
I was no longer looking forward to my workouts. In actual fact, I was dreading them. And as each week went by, I was hating them more and more. My body was physically and mentally tired of doing the same things over and over again. My will power alone was getting me through.
Eventually I stopped doing the HITT workouts and instead focused on just running. This small change made me feel a lot better. I was no longer having to force myself through workouts I wasn’t enjoying and instead had something different to do each day.
Later that year, my gym reopened and for the next 3 months I worked at re-building my strength and using weights in the gym.
Mixing up my exercise programme kept me excited to workout and was challenging my body in different ways.
My only goal for fitness in 2020 was to stay in shape and look after my health. And because of this, there was no need for me to stick to a fixed routine. Yes HITT workouts would keep me fit, but so would running and so would strength training.
If my fitness goal was to improve in a certain exercise or sports then yes I would have less flexibility in what I could do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep things fresh.
In the gym you can incorporate new movements over time. With running you can try different distances and speeds. With homeworks outs you can do different intensities and try different trainers.
When I decide to mix things up, it’s not because I “failed” at sticking to my plan, it’s just because I’m ready to try something different.
And that’s OK.
4. My relationship is stronger than I thought
The pandemic has been a catalyst to many couples breaking up. Divorce rates spiked around the world in 2020 as quarantine life exposed the cracks in many relationships. Spending so much time with any one person is difficult and I would guess that even the best couples had some moments of struggle.
The pandemic 100% exposed the cracks in my relationship as well. In fact my boyfriend and I almost broke up multiple times as we navigated the strain the pandemic placed on us both individually and as a couple.
We experienced a long period of time living together and only seeing each other as well as a long distance relationship (when we both spent a few months at home with our families).
Spending time apart meant we did not argue, however we did often find it hard to connect. There are only so many times you can talk on the phone about your day working from home, what workout you did and what you are eating for dinner. I also struggled with my mental health during this time and found it hard to focus on keeping things going when we were physically separated.
When we were together we were able to connect again and my mental health completely recovered. However when one of us was having a bad day, we ended up arguing over every minor annoyance.
As we’ve lived together for a while, I am used to this. However because we were together 100% of the time, these arguments intensified. Our most common issue was around house work with both of us claiming we were doing 90% of the work.
But no matter what the argument was, we made it through as something always brought us back together.
The longest we made it without talking was one morning. With only each other to talk to, it was impossible for us to stay mad at each other for too long. Our communication has actually improved since we now have to address arguments rather than forget about them while we are apart doing different things.
Although we’ve been together for four years, we don’t generally discuss where the relationship is going, preferring to live in the moment. But if we can make it through the pandemic, maybe this one is going to last.
5. My moods come and go
Recently I have had a lot more time on my hands. With this extra time, I’ve found myself paying a lot more attention to my surroundings and my internal feelings.
This has made life feel a bit monotonous. I observe myself constantly going to the supermarket, cleaning the kitchen, taking out the bins and watching the hand soap gradually get used up.
Alongside this, I have also observed a cyclic pattern to my moods and feelings towards work.
One week I might wake up feeling tired with a lack of motivation. I’ll struggle to focus at work and will be constantly wishing it was the weekend. I struggle to find the energy to workout and any household task is a massive chore.
But then gradually over the next two weeks I will begin to feel better. I’ll get inspired by something new or something interesting will happen at work and my motivation will return.
I’ll spend the next weekend full of energy and attempt to make burgers completely from scratch (Joshua Wiesman style) or redesign my workout plan.
I assume this has been happening my whole life without me even noticing it.
I will go through periods of excitement followed by periods of tiredness. I’ll lack motivation and then it returns a few weeks later.
While this is a potentially annoying aspect of my personality. Recognising the transient nature of my moods has been really reassuring.
Yes I hate work at the moment. But that doesn’t mean I will always hate it and life will be a struggle forever. Give it a few weeks and I know I will feel much better. I don’t need to worry so much about low mood, because it’s likely it won’t stick around for too long.
This has given me the ability to separate myself from my mood, stopping me from getting tied up in my emotions at the time.
Final Thoughts
I did not expect to learn so much about myself in the last year, but I’m glad that something positive has come out of such a turbulent and distressing year.
While I didn’t tick anything off the bucket list, it hasn’t been a waste of a year after all. What did you learn during the pandemic?
Want to read more about my pandemic experiences? Click here to find out how the pandemic affected my finances as a graduate living in London.
