Overcoming Adversity and Developing Resilience During Times of Uncertainty
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This year really hit all of us hard, with a worldwide pandemic and unreasonable responses to it, coupled with blatant social injustices that only reveal a small part of much larger ongoing issues. It’s easy for some people like me to disassociate from it all by just grinding mindless video games for hours on end or binge watching Netflix shows, but that isn’t helpful in the long run. Avoiding problems may just cause them to become amplified and return to bite you way harder in the future.
After 3 months of being quarantined in my parents house and barely interacting with anyone outside of my immediate family, these are some of the things I did to regain a sense of control and happiness in my life:
- Reconnecting with some close friends and started having weekly virtual hangouts to stay in touch.
- Staying informed about what is going on in the world and having a few close people to talk to about the current issues.
- Changing my mindset to be more appreciative of the current things in my life rather than being sad (about not being able to travel to see my girlfriend that is 6,000 miles away).
- Making a list of the all the skills I have and ones that I can actively develop, and brainstormed various ideas for starting a business. I also started actively keeping a journal and writing down affirmations as well as weekly goals.
- Partaking in self-care such as finally getting a haircut and doing some hobbies that I genuinely enjoy such as drawing and art.
These days I feel way more focused and productive in my daily tasks as well as being able to accomplish a few of my personal and business goals that I have been putting off since quarantine began. Here are some of the key strategies that I learned through building resilience and overcoming setbacks and hardships that I’ve experienced over the last decade: