Find an Anchor to Get Through COVID

What I’m thinking about this weekend … 

Each individual is experiencing the COVID shut down in their own way. Your experience is not mine. And my reference point for disruption to life pre-COVID is not yours. Our reactions and judgements to the current circumstances are dependent upon one or many anchoring points in our past. If you’ve experienced a sudden job loss, restriction of activity, or even loss of liberty, are you experiencing the last two months differently than those around you?

The science calls this a cognitive bias, heuristics of judgement, or anchoring. Here’s a short description of anchoring from the Nobel Prize winning Daniel Kahneman. 

Traveling and eating out are luxuries of life. We’ve made these activities normative social behaviors. In other words, you don’t need to go to the Olive Garden to eat pasta, you could easily make/cook pasta at home. But, we likely have a friend-group that eats out regularly. We share our experiences of eating out with one another. If I don’t have anything to share, I’m not conforming to the norm. 

That norm is gone and we’re upset. 

But we’re irrationally upset. 

It’s gone for everyone. 

But, it’s not gone forever.

This is temporary. 

So what else is going on?

It’s possible we’re witnessing what a lack of adverse experience looks like in real-time. Or maybe a failure to rationally remember an adverse experience that would give many a better perspective on the current circumstances. 

I spent nearly six months in jail then almost three years under supervised probation. While my experience in jail wasn’t highly traumatic, it was an adverse experience (whether I deserved the incarceration or not — which I did). 

This time in my life is a perpetual anchor.

There is a lot of uncertainty and a big transition ahead for me. But when I start to feel cooped-up or missing some luxuries of life pre-COVID, I remember what it was like when my liberty and opportunities were severely restricted. I remember what it was like to live off of cheese and mustard sandwiches (the best!!!) and to be unable to do most of what my immediate social network was doing. 

If you are feeling like the current circumstances are just too much to bear … what is the reference point you are using to make that judgement? 

In all likelihood you have experienced a moment of great uncertainty in your life. Recall that moment. Let that be your anchor for calming you today and helping you forge through to tomorrow.