I realized last week that we are now moving into our sixth calendar month of living with countless restrictions as the global community continues to combat COVID-19. That’s already one half of 2020 spent in some form of lockdown! Although, I am not claiming to be psychic, I feel like I can say without a doubt that many aspects of our world have changed significantly for the foreseeable future. Wow!
If anyone had asked me in February how I thought the rest of 2020 was going to unfold, our current reality would not have crossed my mind. I don’t think anyone I know would have or could have predicted it! In light of this revelation, whenever I get into a conversation about living with the constraints of COVID-19, I ask people “How are you getting through?”
I’m always curious to hear how my friends and family have adapted their lifestyles and adjusted to this new reality. Additionally, I want to get people talking about all of the little things they’ve done to set themselves up for success! As I have mentioned before, these are gritty times and these gritty times have called for more grit than most of us even knew we had available deep down inside.
You all know my love of words by now and here’s another haze-ism: GRITuals. It’s a not-so-fancy word to label all of the routines and rituals I’ve been repeating each day or week to navigate this ongoing challenge! Sometimes we need a whole lot of grit to navigate a giant obstacle and other times we need to dig down and muster up enough grit do the same thing over and over and over again.
Three GRITuals that have become helpful for me are:
- taking a few minutes each day to remind myself of the things I want to accomplish (e.g., spend a certain amount of time doing some form of cardio, call or text that person who’s been on my mind, play outside).
- taking a few minutes in each day to identify possible obstacles that may pop up and making a plan to navigate or overcome them.
- writing down everything I eat because I find it sooo easy to forget how much I’ve snacked between meals while working from home all the time. From the middle of March until the end of May, if I thought I was hungry, I’d check my list. I wasn’t counting calories or thinking about nutritional information; it was simply a confirmation that I just ate so I wasn’t really hungry. By June, I knew what hungry felt like and I realized I had completely curbed my snack attacks!
Looking back, what are some of the GRITuals you’ve developed over the last few months? Which ones have become a part of your day-to-day routine(s)?
