Introduction
We are living in an endless nightmare where everyone is struggling to survive for as long as they possibly can. COVID19 patients gasping for oxygen while the doctors are working tirelessly round the clock to keep patients alive.
Since schools were shut down due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, a significant majority of the global population has been stuck home with limited movement around for months.
While a few people are beginning to come to a realization of how long we probably might be confined indoors, some are still under the delusion, the virus is just going to magically disappear the next morning.
Since the unexpected lockdown, we all have been developing new habits. The striking problem is that many of us are oblivious to the harm some of these habits will cause in our lives especially in the nearest future.
We seem not to notice how subtly our live styles are changing. It all seems out of our control and we are slowly and comfortably welcoming it.
According to research, it takes at least 30 days for a person to develop a new habit. Now, think for a second, what being home for 3 months might result in.
Two things are certain, whether you like it or not, you are consciously or subconsciously developing some new habits now. Everyone is. My question is this;
What habits are you developing as a student during this uncertain times?
My guess is, if you are still reading this article to this point then you have decided to take matters into your own hands and choose for yourself what kind of person you want to become after this horrific and frightening nightmare is over.
In this post, I am going to share with you 4 things that you can do to ensure that you are developing some healthy habits that are going to be extremely beneficial in the long run after all this is over.
Let’s get right into it.
1. Zoom out and Shut it all down.
Do me a little favor,
Just for a moment, stop reading this post, turn on the television, and go to a major news channel. Watch it for five minutes, and listen carefully.
You will definitely hear newscasters consistently using words like
Deaths, Pandemic, crisis, plaque, danger, massacre, starvation, painful, panic etc
Why is that?
These programs are specifically designed to try and keep you glued to your screens as much as possible. So to achieve this, they intentionally fill their headlines with FEAR WORDS.
Now that we know this. The very first thing we need to do is to:
Shut it down!!.
The times we are living in are already difficult enough and almost unbearable for any human being on planet earth. So do yourself a favor and not permit news channels to add more fuel to your troubles.
To be able to maintain your sanity and focus for this in-deterministic long period of time that we will be confined at home, you need to reduce your sources of information as much as possible.
We are surrounded by an overwhelming inflow of information from all sources. In fact, the advent of COVID19 has made everyone an expert in virology.
I’m not saying disconnect yourself from the rest of the world. You have to stay informed but be smart enough to connect with the most reliable sources of information and keep the number of sources small.
Be wise enough to focus and not lose your mind in this chaos. I don’t even watch the news anymore. My friends who spend their entire day watching the news, feed me with the updates for less than 30 minutes. That’s it.
Ask yourself this;
How much depressive information can your mind take before driving you insane?
Guard your ears diligently as they are the gateway to your mind. Filter what gets into them, because as the popular adage among programmers goes —
Garbage in, Garbage out
2. Develop a new skill.
There is one thing I know COVID-19 has given most of us, that is TIME. The time which we may never have in our lifetime. I try to find the silver lining in every dark cloud no matter how dark it might be.
If you are a procrastinator just like me, you will know that the most common lies we always tell ourselves for not doing anything worthy is “there ain’t time and I’m too busy”.
Now, what are you going to tell yourself?
This period presents a unique opportunity to get up and try something new. Something you had always dreamt of doing but convinced yourself you did not have the time.
Maybe learn how to sing, dance, play a musical instrument, write, program a computer, create a website, etc. Whatever it is, now is the ideal moment to make use of this unexpected break because this might be the last time we ever get such a scenario in our lifetime on planet earth.
A very good friend of mine just launched his new youtube channel a few days ago and I subscribed instantly. That is something he had been talking about ever since I met him last year, then he saw this window of opportunity and just couldn’t miss it. Guess what? He already got more than 2k subscribers. Impressive right?
No skill is ever useless. You might just discover your God-given talent and change your life forever. Give yourself the opportunity to at least try.
3. Focus on your Body
Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live ~ Jim Rohn
I don’t care if you used to work out or not before the outbreak of this pandemic, now is the time where you have no choice than to get out of bed and stretch your muscles no matter how hard that might feel.
When things were still normal, we were mobile beings. After walking to school and back we convinced ourselves we at least did some sports and that’s enough to stay healthy.
Now, we are not any different from pets. Sitting home, just eating, and shitting.
The problem now becomes:
For how long can we continue to live like this before it starts affecting us negatively?
The human body was not designed to be confined to one spot. However, now we are literally under house imprisonment. It is so easy to wake up now at 12 noon, have brunch, go back to bed, watch movies, chat with friends, visit the fridge every 10 minutes.
This seems like a perfect life, isn’t it? well No!! Let’s imagine you do this for a month on lockdown. How many pounds are you going to gain? I find it quite disturbing when people say they ain’t doing sports because the gym is quite far away.
Here is the truth. You do not need a gym to do sports. All you need is an empty space that is big enough to stretch your muscle and that’s it.
Staying healthy during this period is not going to be easy but it is imperative that you try as hard as you can.
The fight is not between you and COVID19 but between you and your health.
4. Engage in Online Learning
Once you stop learning, you start dying ~~ Albert Einstein
At this moment, there is a problem that we might be blind to see. Most universities have transitioned to online classes, however, it is perfectly clear that this is not as effective as in-class lectures use to be before schools were put on lockdown.
The quality of education has dropped drastically despite the efforts put in place by the respective institutions. This has an insidious effect in your educational career that might only be apparent in the future.
To ensure that you are absorbing top-notch knowledge offered by the highest echelons of the educational sector, you need to compliment your online-education offered by your universities with those offered by Massive Online Open Courses(MOOCs).
MOOCs are these amazing free online websites on the internet with high-quality content in almost every field. The biggest advantage of these sites is that they were built for online learning and extraordinary effort in research has been put to make sure they are delivering the best.
In order words, MOOCs have been ready for years to offer online lectures. Whether you are currently taking online lessons from your universities or not, I strongly advise you to dive right into some of these awesome websites now and start learning.
Here are some of the top online platforms out there which I will recommend to you right now. Most of these sites offer completely free access to their video lectures and even certificates after completion. Check these out.
Udacity, Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare .
There are a lot more but from my experience, the above list provides great content and the knowledge I have accumulated from them is imponderable.
It doesn’t matter what you are learning as long as you are learning something new then you are growing. Knowledge has never been useless.
The Takeaway
It is one of the most challenging times of our lives we are going through at the moment. It is super important that we do not get distracted by the chaos around us. We need to focus on certain aspects of our lives.
In this post, I have written about controlling the type of information that gets into your ears in order to maintain your sanity. Secondly, now is the perfect time to develop a new skill in anything that is of interest to you.
Your health is the most important thing I believe you need to watch out for during this long period of lockdown. Finally, continuously learning from the many free online platforms that exist now will ensure that your knowledge keeps growing and that you are developing.
I leave you with this quote.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An opportunist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
Stay safe and never stop growing.
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