Summary

The article provides strategies for maintaining mental health and productivity during quarantine, emphasizing self-care and personal development.

Abstract

The article "Keeping Ourselves Sane and Guilt-Free" addresses the challenges faced by individuals during quarantine, including job loss, enforced breaks from work, and the stress of working from home. It acknowledges the potential for anxiety, depression, and feelings of uselessness and guilt due to perceived unproductivity. The author offers a seven-step approach to combat these negative emotions: listing skills and strengths to boost self-esteem, acknowledging weaknesses for self-improvement, acquiring new skills to stay productive, finding a hobby for personal enjoyment, maintaining social connections for mutual support, caring for the body through diet and exercise, and caring for the mind through rest and relaxation. The article encourages readers to view this period as an opportunity for growth and to emerge stronger and wiser.

Opinions

The author believes that maintaining a regular sleep schedule is crucial for mental health, even when one might not see immediate effects.
Working from home is recognized as potentially stressful, especially when balancing work and personal life.
The article suggests that job seekers should not be disheartened by rejections but should persistently showcase their abilities to potential employers.
It is the author's view that acknowledging one's weaknesses is not to self-criticize but to foster personal growth and self-improvement.
The author emphasizes the importance of using the gift of time during quarantine to learn new skills and gain knowledge, which can lead to a sense of achievement.
Engaging in hobbies is seen as a way to find happiness and maintain sanity.
The article advises staying in touch with family and friends to rebuild relationships and gain mutual support, while also warning against toxic individuals who may exacerbate negative feelings.
Physical health is highlighted as essential, with recommendations for a balanced diet and regular exercise.
Mental rest and relaxation are considered equally important, with activities like reading, watching movies, meditating, and doing yoga suggested for maintaining mental well-being.
Overall

Keeping Ourselves Sane and Guilt-Free

This article serves as a reminder to ourselves of the different ways to be productive in order to keep ourselves busy and feeling great.

During this quarantine period, some of us may have lost our jobs, some of us may have been forced to take a rest from working (indefinitely), and some of us get to work from home (I would like to call them, the lucky ones as compared to the previous two).

Don’t get me wrong. I understand working from home can be really stressful.

For some of us, working from home with limited resources and demanding bosses can be super stressful, plus we need to have the sense to separate working hours and personal/family hours.

Anywho, the previous two, who have lost their jobs and have been forced to take a break from work (unpaid), are facing serious struggles.

You don’t know when you can get back a decent job, suitable for you. This is where you might develop anxiety.
You are constantly looking for jobs but none of them are getting back to you. You will start to get depressed.
You’ve got nothing to do today, you’ve got nothing to do tomorrow, and you’ve got nothing to do for the rest of the week/month. You might feel like you’re useless, unworthy of anything, and guilty of being unproductive.

Gradually, your worries keep you up all night, resulting in irregular sleeping hours. What’s worse is that you are not even trying to regulate back your sleeping schedules, because you’ve got nothing that the sleep deprivation might affect. So, why bother, right?

That is really really bad for our self-esteem and our mental health, obviously. Let’s not let our own perspectives drag us down.

How can we keep ourselves sane and guilt-free?

It may not be all, but I’m sure that you can bring back at least one or two points from here with you and get practical with it.

1. List down the Skills and Strengths

This is to keep ourselves constantly reminded that we are NOT useless, we are NOT unworthy, and we have the ability to rise again. Sharpening our skills from time to time is a must.

Once we have regained our self-esteem, we need to start actively finding job opportunities using our skills and strengths. We should try not to get bothered by rejections or not getting any replies from the employers/recruiters. We should just keep sending out our resume and just let them know who we are, and what we are capable of.

Do that every day and right there, you are being productive.

2. Take note of the Weaknesses

This is clearly NOT to kick ourselves but to be aware of our own weaknesses. This is a good time to train ourselves to get rid of our weak points and become our better selves.

3. Acquire new Skills

We are given the gift of time; we must use it well.

What skills are we lacking? What skills do we want to learn?

Take an hour or two, each day, to acquire those new skills. Learning new things can make us feel productive with a sense of achievement. This is an opportunity for us to gain new knowledge. Look at us! We are learning; we are acquiring new skills and knowledge. We are being productive and now, we can be guilt-free.

4. Find a hobby

This is to keep ourselves sane.

What have you been wanting to do and didn’t have time before to actually do?

Let’s do it now. We should find something that we really enjoy doing and actually do it. We can make something out of it. Well, there again, you are productive. This is how we can find our own happiness.

5. Keep in touch

Talking helps. We do not have to be all by ourselves.

We should catch up with our family members, our elders, our friends, and our ex-colleagues. We can re-bond and re-build all the relationships during this time, and give out all the care we can give. We can help them solve their problems, give them some advice and meanwhile, we can also get help from them, get their advice. It’s a win-win.

But, here’s a little friendly reminder though. Stay away from people who will judge you and make you feel worse than you already do. We must stay away from toxic people as far as we can.

6. Care for your body

We can start our diet plan that we never actually able to get started.

Even if we are not doing any special diet, we should be eating healthy and nutritious food, 3 meals a day, and at a regular time. We should start doing exercises as well.

7. Care for your mind

We need to get some rest. If not now, then when?

This is the best time for us to rest and relax. We can read books, watch movies, watch the news, listen to music, meditate, do yoga, or whatever we find peaceful and enjoyable. We should learn to relax.

There we go! As you’ve read, there are a lot of things for us to get done. It’s not true that we’ve got nothing to do. Let’s not give up on ourselves and our abilities. Let’s give our body and mind something to do.

We all shall get out of this, a little bit stronger and a little bit wiser.