A lot of us have been left stuck at home for most or all of our days since the beginning of COVID-19 related shutdowns in early 2020. This means it’s been a long year of trying to figure out how to handle the stress of a pandemic, work from home, keep your family safe or occupied, homeschool children, and much more.
It’s getting highly difficult to keep your sanity while trying to stay safe from the pandemic and getting sick, especially if you’re at home with others that may get on your nerves or families that are suddenly home a lot more often that may not have been as much beforehand. There are some ways to handle this and cope though. Here are some of the ways people are coping while being stuck at home to give you some ideas.
Building Habits
Many people have chosen to try to see the brighter side of this difficult situation and used it to better themselves or their life with new habits, expanding on already good habits, and more. This means plenty of focus on exercise and nutrition, trying to improve immune systems to help keep healthier and safe, bettering sleep routines, starting a new hobby, and more. Habits can be a great tool when you have healthy or good ones and the time at home has given a lot of opportunity to try something new or work on a way to create a new habit for your life or household.
New Routines
If you’re someone that prefers functioning on a schedule or routine and have struggled with less of that since the pandemic shutdowns began, creating new routines for yourself and/or your family can be pretty useful. To cope with change of lifestyle a new routine or creating a routine out of the chaos can reduce stress and create a better sense of control over the situation you may not have had control of originally. Whether that’s bettering or creating a work at home schedule, making a routine out of meal times and family time, or scheduling kids’ homeschool.
Learn New Things
Extra time in the day or time at home with nothing to do can mean time to learn something new, or return to an old learning path. Many people took time during COVID-19 to read books, learn about hobbies or interests, educate themselves on positive thinking rituals, connect with spirituality or religion, and so much more. Picking a topic you find interesting at random to research can be a super simple way to try this coping skill, or investing in things like audiobooks to listen to. You can also learn a lot from free resources like websites and Youtube.
Tap Into Creativity
Possibly the most fun way to take up time and create positive bonding for families or positive pause for individuals is to tap into your inner creativity some while stuck at home. This could be a range of things depending on what you like to do. Some people have turned towards writing, others enjoy traditional arts and crafts, and some also like to be more widespread in their creativity by trying something new or unique like crafty hobbies and more. Art and creative thinking have been proven to be super healthy for your mind as well as for emotional bonding.
You can use this information as a blueprint for some coping skills or ideas for yourself or your family to feel better being stuck in the house or your yard more often or just for some interesting food for thought on other people’s habits during the shutdowns. While some of us are beginning to experience some more freedom from the restrictions placed during the early stages of COVID, there are still plenty of us that have to stay home for health reasons or until localities lift regulations more.
It was nice at first to have a change of pace for some of us, or stressful for others, but now that there’s been such a long period of time we can all agree it’s difficult to stay sane and cope with this lifestyle alteration and sometimes some good ideas can go a long way.