Are You a Pandemic Victim or a Thriver?
Did the Pandemic make people thrive? Made them creative?
This article is inspired by two books I've read recently. Both of them I recommend strongly.
- The Choice by Dr. Edith Eva Eger— a holocaust survivor, a therapist
- Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey — no need for introduction, you probably know him as an Oscar winning actor from Dallas Buyers Club
Both books are unconventional memoirs, both of them apporach books that lift you up from a chair.
- If you are a self-reflection beginner and English language lover, read Greenlights.
- If you are an introspection enthusiast and have the courage to relive the horrors of holocaust, go for The Choice.
The Choice is a memoir of Mrs. Eger who survived Nazi concentration camps. A woman who found her life purpose only after her kids grew up in the USA and she left her husband (to rejoin him later). A woman who'd been through a trauma and had to cope with it decades later. She's been working as a therapist ever since and finally found her place on Earth.
Kids or adults, we all struggle
Let’s be honest. It is hard to compare my struggles to someone who has been through holocaust and survived. From that perspective, anything I struggle with should be a piece of cake. But it is not. How come?
Recently, we've all been through a traumatic experience. Uncertainty on a big scale: the pandemic. Some of us lost loved ones. Some of us lost jobs. Some of us lost ourselves. We had to slow down, accept what we cannot change, and look at life from a different perspective.
Our painful experiences aren’t a liability — they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.
— Edith Eger
Take your time to grief. And then revisit what happened.
What did you lose? What is left?
"Because of Covid" (the most common of phrase of 2020, btw), we lost our crutches and our distractions, the things we used to suppress our feelings of loss or disappointment: social events, drinking & partying (oh, yes, alcohol), crazy workout routines, networking events, conventions or showing off how busy we are in the office.
Suddenly… It was gone.
Only Netflix and PlayStation remained.
I lost my rhythm, my cadence of events and thrilling social interactions. No more business travel, parties, reunions and spontaneous stuff. No more distractions. I ended up alone, just me, myself & I. I call it me time.
And now, I'm happy it happened.
Pandemic victims vs thrivers
The starting point was similar for most of us: change of circumstances. You can be a victim of your situation. The choice is yours. So how about to be a thriver instead?
That means I’m responsible for being happy. Am I responsible for feeling the way I do? Yes. That’s correct, Ma’am.
Ouch.
When odds are stacked against me, my choice of approaching things is my only freedom. To make a choice means I am free. Stepping out of the holocaust of my mind, as Dr. Eger says.
Thrivers get creative: Restrictions? Give it to me!
Schools closed.
Offices closed.
Gym closed.
Challenge accepted. Limited resources can't stop you.
Restrictions make people creative. How many of you started to improve things around the house, took out sewing kits, or got back to your hobbies?
Restrictions can also make people frustrated, depressed or suicidal. We saw spike in subscribers of Netflix or other streaming platforms that embrace the passive entertainment.
I was born an optimist. I want to focus on the more optimistic consequences of the pandemic. As I said above, it's my choice to be a Victim or a Thriver.
WeTransfer (not just a file transfer company) developed this beautiful drawing app called Paper. If you like to draw on flipcharts and whiteboards, I bet you'll enjoy drawing your mindmaps, frameworks and sketches in Paper as well.
I regularly draw in Paper and publish my drawings under Instagram handle @the_raw_inks and I use paper for illustrating my articles, too.
WeTransfer is surrounded by lot of creatives. They felt even more creative in the midst of pandemic. According to their Ideas2020 report, almost half of the creatives (45.3%) claimed they enjoyed more creative ideas during 2020. 29.6% of people are feeling more creative than usual. The report visualization is as playful as Paper itself.
With constraints, you dedicate your mental energy to acting more resourcefully. When challenged, you figure out new ways to be better.
The most successful creative people know that constraints don’t limit their efforts — in fact, they give their minds the impetus to leap higher.
More time, less to do. Time to get creative
What has the pandemic given me? More me time:
- I started a drawing account.
- I started writing my thoughts down and publishing them on Medium and LinkedIn.
- I started painted ceramics.
Important to say, creativity is not just an artsy thing. It can be really anything: new hacks and improvements on your house, various work projects, learning new things or simply innovating. It gives you a chance to take a step back, look at the way you've been doing things and start doing them better or differently.
For me personally, it helped me to dismiss activities that I no longer cherish, sever contacts that are shadows of past, revisit my relationships and assess my life goals. Distractions aside, I was able to focus on what is close to my heart and actually work on it.
Simplify. Focus. Conserve to liberate.
— Matthew McConaughey
It's an approach: Glass half full and half empty
Edith Eger illustrates this on her holocaust experience. Nazis killed her parents, imprisoned her in one of the concentration camps, shaved her head, and humiliated her in many ways. They took her freedom. The only thing that remained, as she says, was her mindset and her choice.
Or better. If everything is taken away from you, the only thing that is left is how you perceive the circumstances. What approach you decide to take; whether you decide to exercise your freedom of choice.
To be free is to live in the present. If we are stuck in the past, saying, ”If only I had gone there instead of here…” or “If only I had married someone else…” we are living in a prison of our own making.
— Edith Eğer
Through the pandemic, I was proudly watching the people around me, how creatively they coped with the situation — I see a lot of thrivers. In fact, I'm hopeful for humans to thrive in this century. Just keep being creative.
Thrivers are not happy all the time. Hell, no. I'm convinced none of the thrivers around me felt happy or good all the time. They surely felt lost, hopeless or just sad at some moments. But they made themselves happy again, by taking advantage of the situation and not letting situation or others take advantage on them.
Join the club of optimists and creatives. It's worth the work.
Dr. Edith Eger was born in Košice, Eastern Slovakia, 70 kilometers far from Humené where my closest colleague, Viera, was born. Viera always says “Your life is your cabbage.” Meaning: I don't judge you, do whatever the hell you wanna to do.
“Tvoja kapusta.”
—Viera Stofcikova
Important to say: I'm humbly acknowledging that I'm one of the lucky ones. I did not suffer significant loses during the pandemic. I didn't lose my job or my home. I lost my grandpa, but not due to Covid. And when writing this post, I was sitting in a comfortable chair, sipping a cup of coffee.
