Positive Mental Health during Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown (Part 1 of 2)

5 min readFeb 15, 2021

Take care of yourself first. Then others.

No. I am no trained expert to give you any guidance. Neither am I any type of “guru”. This is a personal evaluation of last 12 months w.r.t. to mental health status.

This week, I attended a short talk by one of my colleague w.r.t to positive mental health, which I appreciated a lot. The talk not only gave a lot of information, rather it touched the soul of many people who attended the same. The talk was like a river which flowed through the bed and took its way to the destination with many touch points.

Note — The below items/sections/headings were presented by the colleague at the talk , so it’s not mine. I have put my own interpretation and evaluation to them.

This covid-19 pandemic has been an unique experience. If I look back, I would say that the world got a reality check on its own priority. What it allowed us to realize that (2)human life takes priority over anything else and (2)technology is still not good enough to challenge the nature. So it’s imperative that we take care of ourselves and keep positive.

This will be a two part post —

Part 1 (this one) will focus on Self-care

and

Part 2 (coming next) will focus on setting boundaries.

1 Self-Care

The first important criteria of positive health is to love yourself. If you can’t love yourself, how can you love someone else ?

1.1 Find Time For Yourself

Finding sometime for yourself; Alone. Daily. At least for 30mins.

And within yourself. be it in home, or a walk. Even for 15 mins or so.

Focus on yourself. Do whatever you like. Read. Listen Music. Meditate. Write.

Even more important. During lockdown. Staying with the family with kids all around.

I have found the 3rd lockdown in Ireland be particularly challenging, as the monotonous life starts to creep in.

Personal application → Reading books has been my me-time everyday. Positive thing is the goodreads goal is flying.

📚 Goodreads —https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/25895805

1.2 Don’t Overcommit

Realize quickly that life is different. Don’t commit. If possible, under commit and over deliver. Be it pandemic or not, it’s an additional pressure if you over commit.

Think what you can do and you can achieve. What you used to do before. Will you be able to do same during lockdown. Think.

Be kinder to yourself !

Personal application → I started a personal project during 1st lockdown (May-June 2020) which had it’s first 4 deliverable ready, but then I realized it is over commitment on my part. I will not be able to meet that commitment due to lockdown, so it went back to my to-do list rather than commitment.

A demo version is here for some embarrassment ( “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” ) -

1.3 Letting Go of Control

This is most important and most interesting. Control is gone from us. We are controlled by others now.

Be it pandemic fear. Life fear. Government rules. Lockdown enforcement.

Control on things what is in your control. Not others. And be acceptable that all in not in your control. Look into the positive side. Look into future.

Personal application → Accepting things as it comes and look for tomorrow as a fresh start. It’s not an act, rather a habit. It’s not one example to highlight, it’s part of everyday life.

Be it in work schedule. Be it on time. Look for new things which is in your control and influence it. And look to create something shareable.

Am a big fan of creating something which is “demo-able” (the agile mindset in me keep pushing for that, can’t help).

PS: If you are hesitant and need inspiration, read this book once (you can thank me, later)-

Show Your Work! a book by Austin Kleon

Download the cover and other images in the blogger kit. ISBN: 9780761178972 | Foreign translations A book for people…

austinkleon.com

1.4 Break From Social Media

Social media. Take a break. It’s full of positive life. Rarely someone posts negative things there. And that’s the cause of problem. Life is not social media.

It has both positive and negative.

In general people in IT sector are more productive and lot of focus time available due to lesser distractions. While that’s good for work life, it’s not always for positive mental health.

Personal application → Digital detox. Been working from home for a year, we do realize that the screen time has increased a lot now a days.

I took a break from all digital devices for a day. I called it a digital detox day. No mobile, no laptop. No computer. Even no smartwatch. No fitbit. It was refreshing.

It helped me a lot with FOMO. I realized I didn’t miss out anything.

As a learning from that, I have uninstalled facebook (which was most busy social media app) from mobile from New Year day. I need to check, I check from laptop. That’s more than enough. Life is a lot simpler with that.