Coping With COVID-19 “The Bright Side of the Pandemic”

The proverbial bottle

It is well known that every situation in life has two sides to it. The best example of that truth is the proverbial bottle. Is it half empty or half full? Well, it is both. The two possible descriptions of the bottle reflect a partial aspect of reality and neither are wrong. You can make either statement and still be right. If we call “the bottle” the entire “field of reality,” then what we see and how we perceive it, will be true at least half of the time. But, whichever way we choose to look at it, our perception will have a marked impact on our perception of our reality. Our perception, in turn, will affect how we feel emotionally about our life circumstances. These different ways of looking at things in our lives is what separates the optimist from the pessimist stance.

But, what most people do not reflect upon is HOW we come to see one aspect of the bottle and not the other. What is the essential factor in our minds way of looking at things that makes the big difference?

If you haven’t been able to figure it out…..Well, the telling factor that will make all the difference is WHERE YOU PLACE OUR ATTENTION. This is to say that if your attention is placed on what is MISSING from the bottle, then you are will perceive it as half-empty. While, if your ATTENTION is placed on WHAT IS, then the bottle will appear to you as half-full. In general, most people in our culture sees the bottle half empty, i.e., they are pessimists. Only a a minority of people see the bottle half-full in most situations.

So the field of reality is always a whole bottle that has two perceptual sides to it. This duality is the equivalent of the Taoist YIN and YANG symbol: half of it is white and the other half is black. This duality is inherent in reality and cannot be eliminated; it is structural. There is always the opposite pole to any magnet.

Overall, people that place their attention on WHAT IS are happier and much more satisfied individuals than the half-emptiers. Now, the beauty of this realization is that once you become aware of this reality you can change your perception of reality by SHIFTING your attention. In practical terms that means that YOU CAN LEARN TO BECOME AN OPTIMIST.

The Bottle and the Pandemic

Now, how does this apply to our current COVID-19 pandemic situation?

Well, one way of looking at the current situation is that this COVID pandemic “sucks.” If we are “half emptiers” we will focus on everything this pandemic has taken away from us: Our freedoms, our choices and plans, our human connections, our jobs and health, our lives styles, you name it…..

For the most part, this is the position of the majority; and this is what is heard and seen day in and day out from the screens of our computers, phones, and TV sets. This is the stuff the news is made out of. Remember that the news thrive on attention–and nothing grabs more attention than BAD NEWS.

However, what is it that this pandemic actually afford us? What can we live during this historical period that we would have never had the opportunity to experience were it not by the arrival of the virus? Furthermore, what can we learn from this pandemic?

There is an old American saying that says: “If life hands you a lemon, make yourself a lemonade.” Now, most people will agree that this pandemic is a BIG LEMON that has been thrown at us out of left field.

How Can We Make Lemonade out of this Lemon

But, can we find a way of making ourselves “lemonade” out of this “big lemon”?

I believe, we can. I will tell you here a few examples of the “lemonade” present in the current pandemic circumstances. These examples are taken from real life. They are the fruit of my day-to-day interactions with people I see in my office. These people–not only are they not doing too bad during this pandemic–but they are actually thriving and enjoying its unintended benefits.

• It is undeniable that some people are actually enjoying working from home. They love the freedom that working from home offers them and the fact that they do not have to waste time and money commuting. They also love the fact that they do not have to deal with co-workers distracting them or with supervisors looking over their shoulders.
• Some people feel that–for the first time in years–they have had a chance to re-connect with their significant others and with their children.
• Some people have actually “met” their spouses for the first time in years. This is the case as before COVID–when both espouses were working full time–they had relationships that could be best described as of “two ships that crossed in the night.”
• Because of this pandemic young people have cut the number of hours devoted to partying and they are more present and in contact with their families
• Some people actually love the respite that the pandemic has introduced into their lives. They simply like “the new normal” because it is more tranquil.
• People with social anxiety feel particularly well in these circumstances as they are not forced to socialize.
• People with OCD feel validated. A patient of mine even told me:”You see Dr T, I was right all along when it came to germs and preventing infection, I was just preparing for a day like this all of my life.”
• While it is true that some couples have had more conflict out of interacting more many have used this time of isolation from the world to reconnect emotionally and sexually.
• People that were not happy with their jobs have found that getting extra help from the government during the pandemic has eased their existences.
• Many people are enjoying their commute as traffic has decreased to almost half of what normally used to be.
• Prices in many areas of the economy have gone down: This includes the price of gas, accommodations, air tickets, and other commodities related to the hospitality industry.
• For the above-mentioned reasons, the pandemic makes it a lot more affordable for people to take mini-vacations in places where before they would not have been able to even dream of going for economic reasons.
• There are many many more advantages attached to this odd situation, too many to enumerate them all here. But, in honor to time and space, I will end here.
• Finally, the pandemic has forced us to slow down our all to fast life pace in America. This sudden coming to a halt has made us look at things from a different perspective. The virus has made us reshuffle our deck of values. It has compelled us to look at people, work, and life from a different perspective.
• It is possible that this pandemic will help us move in the direction of a more humane approach to the way we conduct our lives.
• There are many opportunities and lessons hidden in this pandemic: We only need to find them and take advantage of them.

The Lessons left by COVID

What have you learned from this pandemic? Can you think of things that have been better in your life because of it? Can you turn around the way you look at this situation and focus on WHAT IS instead of WHAT IS NOT here because of it?

Can you think of ways of shifting your focus from a half-empty life stance to a half-full one?

Let me know where you are in your life now facing these challenges and what you would suggest others to do in order to extract more “juice” from this pandemic.

Remember: It is ALL about the way you look at things.

As the late Dr. Wayne Dyer reminded us: “WHEN YOU CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS, THE THINGS YOU LOOK AT CHANGE.”