Coronavirus Pandemic: ADHD Perspective
Can Your ADHD hyper-focus help in the midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic?
We really need all the creatives and out of the box thinkers right now.
As I went to the grocery store yesterday, I noticed that the shelves were getting empty very quickly. Panic began to set in that I needed to join the masses and make sure I had enough canned soups and toilet paper. My thoughts were, how are we going to regulate the use of this toilet paper within the household and make sure that we can make it last?!
I started getting into panic thinking and reading a lot of the social media out there and the news. It made it hard focusing on my work. When we have a crisis in our life, it can consume us. I felt that it was bringing me down and feeling a little lethargic as I moved through the day.
My own life was becoming to fall down around me as I was looking forward to my son’s baseball game this weekend. It would have been nice to get out of the house to be in an environment I thought would have been relatively safe from the COVID-19 Coronavirus. Our local schools canceled all the baseball games following suit with the national sports. At that point, I really felt the gravity of our situation.
It started to give me anxiety.
I was feeling a little down and not motivated to do what I usually do: creating a lot of blogs, instagram posts and podcasts. Should we halt everything and put everything on hold? I certainly felt frozen and confused.
I woke up this morning and thought, “No!” What we need is the very people that I speak to, the very people that I work with. We need all our creativity and need everybody to help. Because we are really a one-world economy now.
We need to think outside of the box outside of our homes, outside of our towns and the country. There is a responsibility to the world to get through this.
I came across this quote from a professor from a university, Leonard Sweep, and it really struck me.
“The future is not something we enter. It is something we create.”
What can we do to create a future when we’re just reacting, and we’re closing things down?
I feel like we are kind of like a mouse in one of those cages where you’re you’re going down a ramp, and somebody puts a block down that stops you. You turn around and you find another block placed.
As Americans, we cherish our freedom. We cherish our ability to move around freely to do what we want to do. This is what we pride ourselves in. We are being shut down and being confined to our homes.
Driving around my community, I feel anxious. Even going to the grocery store to buy essentials is stressful. Disinfecting my hands and cart and feeling awkward with my fears, I enter the battleground at the grocery store. I leave feeling embarrassed that I’m walking out with a 24 pack of toilet paper, but grateful I snagged one. But obviously, that’s the smart thing to do. I just want to be home, but yet I’m restless. These are strange conflicted times.
I’ve got that restless entrepreneurial spirit and this makes it hard. I like to get out and exercise and am still going to the gym, but I’m reading in the news that people are getting sick in the gyms, so they’re starting to shut them down.
I’m thinking holy cow, you know what does this mean for me? So, this inspired me to write that it’s time for us; the out of the box thinkers; the creative people to start tapping into that inner superpower and hyper-focus during this challenging time.
Now, my own hyper-focus has been on the news and the devastation. I want to understand the impact of what is going on right now.
We’re in a time that calls for us to tap into our inner creative energy to help us navigate through our current world crisis. We don’t want to shut down our thinking of solutions.
Remember,
The future is not something we enter, but is something we create.
How do we handle the situation?
And respond to the duty to protect our vulnerable?
Go about our daily business while minimizing this hysteria?
This is a very tragic situation. And I have full trust that it’s going to get solved, but we’re in it for a while. Meanwhile, it is wreaking havoc on our world and how we live and work.
We are facing a lot of changes in our routines and how we work.
Could it be a possibility for a positive change?
Can this movement of social distancing and relying on our technology to stay informed and even fed in some areas be something positive and productive?
What do you do when you have all this extra time on your hands?
I’m talking about the extra time you have from canceled sporting events, travel plans, work commute. It really is going to free up some of your time. We can just sit around and read the news, watch the TV and just consume media and feel frozen in life. This is what I am guilty of this last week!
Or, we can shift it.
I often talk about taking a walk in the woods on a lunch break or before you go to work or when you get home to decompress. Since this is a time when you need to distance yourself, Social distancing, you could use it for your personal benefit.
Can you go for a walk around your neighborhood?
Go to a park and go for that walk slowly through the woods?
Use this quieter time to practice being mindful?
Put that energy into something that is going to help you through this or something in the near future?
Or, is there something you’ve been wanting to reflect on and realign your life?
Maybe it’s a career or academic goal. Or, it’s perhaps an interpersonal goal. But this could be an opportunity to really reflect within. Start to tap into some of that creative energy.
You could have a solution for something in your community that is a real problem. It could be a health care issue that you have this great idea for that you can use this time to contemplate. Many inventions come out of problem-solving a current issue. Well, we currently have a lot of problems to solve in a global world. What does our world need right now?
And this change in your day-to-day life can just be what sparks something positive or we can choose to wallow in our grief, anxiety and fears.
If you are healthy and taking the mandatory precautions, heed this advice!
Be proactive in your extra time while social distancing and tap into your creative spirit. You might just change your life for the better or someone else’s!
Let your creative ADHD brain process our current world dilemma and get proactive.
If you have something to share, please comment.
