Thriving in Quarantine; managing your mind and mood, when you’re self-isolating.

Keeping our mind and our mood in check is so important in normal day-to-day circumstances. When we are in exceptional situations, it’s even more important - especially since the brain wants to pay more attention to the negative, which will not be beneficial for us in the long run. 

In order to keep our mood in a good space, we want to keep our brain in task mode as much as possible. This keeps our mind pointed on specific activities and/or thoughts, and helps avoid it wandering into futile predictions of what may or may not happen in the future. You know the famous self-help advice to live in the now? Here’s your chance:

Routine. Go through your regular routine as if you were starting a normal day. Make your bed, shower, get dressed, do your hair/make up. Try to avoid living in pyjamas. 

Keep your bedtime hours. The more we can respect the natural circadian rhythm our body is set to, the easier it is to stay balanced. 

Make a schedule of things to do during your day. Can be reading, studying, writing, filing, cleaning, ironing, cooking, social media time. Break your day up into little blocks of time and assign things to do. (Then do them). It’s important to diversify activities to avoid exacerbating boredom. 

Schedule TV time. Avoid just sitting on the couch and binging movies all day. Make a specific hour that you turn the TV (or netflix) on and when it should be turned off. 

Make meal plans. This will help avoid the grabbing the bag of chips. Nutrition is so important to keep your mind in a good space. Make sure you’re getting adequate levels of Vitamin D, B & Folic Acid. These are crucial for keeping your mood balanced. Complex carbs, lean proteins, fresh veg & fruit are the best. Keep sugar limited as much as possible during this period, as it can cause mood swings. I know this may be hard - but try and limit alcohol intake. 

Get light. Try and get as much light into your home as possible. Even if it means sitting in front of the only window you have in the house (I’m looking at you NYC) for 30 minutes. Vitamin D is essential for keeping your mood elevated and your circadian rhythms normal. 

Exercise - 30 minutes 3 times a week of physical activity is the sweet spot. Even housework counts. Exercise helps release cortisol through your skin which aids in stress management. YouTube is filled with at home workouts, yoga, meditation, dance classes. 

Daydream: a 20 minute daydream exercise imagining things like travelling to beautiful islands, or taking a dreamed about vacation - anything that makes you happy - can increase your sense of positivity. 15 days of doing this exercise consistently has been shown to significantly reduce stress. 

Don’t binge the bad. Yes, we’re all tempted to stay stuck to the TV to feel more informed. Allow yourself a maximum number of minutes to watch the news. Then you have to balance the bad out with the good. For every bad stimulus, it takes 3 good to get you back to normal.

Laugh. YouTube is filled with stand up comedy. To balance out the bad news this is a great technique. If you hate stand up comedy, then actively seek out something that you know will make you laugh. Even if you just hold a fake smile for a few minutes, it will send signals to your body to shift towards happiness. 

Dance Party. Get your “looking hot” clothes out of the closet and put on your favorite tracks. Dance around in the house like no one’s watching - because they’re not ;-). Also YouTube filled with JustDance tracks you can follow or dance tutorials on your favorite tracks. Let the Gen Y kids teach you the latest TikTok moves. Dancing is the fastest way to boost your mood.

Spotify Playlist - the modern day mixtape. Make your favorite Quarantine mixtape and invite others to add/update. 

Scrapbook - Finally, the day you’ve been dreaming about is here. You can finally go through your 30,000 photos. Delete what you don’t need, make those vacation videos you meant to. There’s a ton of apps to animate your photos with all sorts of techniques. I love Wondershare Filmora - but there’s plenty. 

Online party. Get all your friends together on zoom/google meet. You can all eat at the same time, play trivia, or just connect.

Volunteer. Check in with your favorite charity. We all say “if I had more time”…well here it is. Maybe there’s something you can do from home to help out.

Take a class. If you want to pay for it Masterclass has some of the most interesting people talking about what they do. Otherwise if you’ve ever wondered how to do anything, there is a tutorial for everything on YouTube. Literally everything. 

Do your own MasterChef invention challenge. Got the most random ingredients in your fridge? These tend to bring the best plates for our favorite home chefs. Or maybe it’s time to finally try and make that Tarte Tatin. 

Visit a Museum - Google Arts & Culture has 12 museums online with a virtual tour. 

Take language lessons. Download Duolingo and brush up on your French. 

Reach out. Send an email/FB/IG DM to a friend you care about but haven’t spoken to in a while (not an ex, though as that opens Pandora’s box and we don’t need more drama right now). Connectivity and belonging are fundamental to happiness.

IF YOU HAVE KIDS:

Keep them to their regular routines. Even if their school is not yet set up with online classes, follow their normal school day. If they have English, they have to do an hour of English. History they do something with history - etc. This is also a great activity to do together

Make each day *special”. Monday is Movie Night, Tuesday is Taco Night, Wednesday is Costume Party, Thursday is Games Night. This will give them something to look forward to and take the drama and concern out of the unusual circumstances. 

Arts & crafts - again YouTube is a great resource. Generation DIY, 5 Minutes Crafts, and Blossom are my daughter's favorites. It’s also a good opportunity to have a conversation about sustainability and how to turn things into the house into something new. 

Write a play and act it out in a week. This is great because it keeps the kids busy on numerous fronts. The idea, the script, the locations, the costumes. Creative thinking is great for keeping moods high. 

If you have teenagers - well it’s a hit or miss. Follow their lead. Try to engage without pushing. This age doesn’t like to show fear even if it’s there. Fighting with them will make this time harder for both. Let them stay in touch with their friends, as friends are the primary source of comfort. Do try and limit to a reasonable amount though to avoid that they spend 16 hours on the phone. Suggest doing an activity of their choice; they can cook whatever they want one night, they can pick the movie and you have to watch it, do a TikTok with them. Give them a space to feel like they’re in control of something. 

Hope this helps - I’ll be updating this list as new ideas come to me. So do check back.