Lockdown in Perth – Part III
I’ve been in Perth for just over two months now, and a date for my return to Sydney has yet to be set. Although I’ve really been struggling with the fear and horrible news around this virus, the worry about my family back in Germany and the uncertainty around when I’ll be able to see them again, this situation has actually taught me to some unexpected (positive) lessons that I’ll share in this post.
“Just” being with yourself can force you to work through stuff
Everyone has bad days and things that trigger irritability and negative thinking. Usually when this occurs there are many potential distractions, e.g. you can surround yourself with people in the office, you can go to the gym, for a drink, shopping, or do something else to take your mind off things. Not being able to do this has been quite challenging for me: I found myself forced to find new ways to deal with negative thinking and to stay focused.
My lesson learnt from this: Avoiding certain issues doesn’t make them go away. A few weeks after landing in Sydney, I found an amazing book in the second hand store, called “Change your thinking”. This book is about dealing with stress, anxiety and overcoming negative self-talk. What sets this book apart from many others in the genre of self-help is that it offers concrete exercises that you can work through, to help identify and overcome negative thinking patterns. Whenever I have a very bad day and my mind is going a bit crazy with worry, these exercises really help me de-catastrophise situations and bring some clarity into my thoughts.
My health is my responsibility
Ever since I finished school, I’ve been struggling with back issues. Thankfully, it’s never been so dramatic that I couldn’t do my job anymore, but constant niggles and pain certainly don’t promote overall wellbeing. I’ve always been diligent in doing exercises I got from physios, and it seemed to help temporarily, but then the pain would usually creep back. One of the physios I saw in England told me that I should stay off running because it’s high impact and not good for your lower back. That was a real setback for me because running helps me stay balanced and it relieves my asthma, more so than any other cardio. Several health practitioners have told me over the course of time that I need to take more breaks during the day to stretch or exercise. I remember thinking that they don’t seem to really understand what it’s like to work in an office, and that they’re being unrealistic about the amount of breaks I can take. When COVID started and I commenced working from home full-time, I had such bad neck tension that I was experiencing vertigo whenever I moved my head rapidly, or when I was lying on my back. This made me feel that I really needed to change the way I approach my back issues if I want to see true change.
My lesson learnt from this: I started taking proper charge. I’m now taking a lot more breaks for strengthening exercises, stretching, yoga, and using a foam roller on my back. Then I started Personal Training in a friend’s garden twice a week. Now, four weeks later, I’m back into running, albeit veeeery slowly – I started at 10 minutes, increasing the time by 2 minutes every other day, and I’m now at 26 minutes. Every”body” is different, and I need to give this body what it requires if I want to keep living a healthy and happy life. As an example, this “after office yoga workout” is perfect for me.
More breaks don’t mean less productivity
Tying on from the point above, I guess the reason why I never took many breaks before was because I was worried about my productivity. Marketing jobs are busy, and there’s always lots to get through in one day. Additionally, when I’m on a roll, I find it easier to just keep going and I worry that taking a break will bring me out of my flow. Hence, my philosophy for most of my working life was just to power through the day, to get as much done as possible. What often happened then was that, I sometimes found that I got a bit scatter-brainy: Trying to work on several things at the same time, I became less focussed, I had the above-described back issues and when I left in the office, I felt mentally drained and often went home with a lot of nervous energy.
My lesson learnt from this: The positive side effect of the breaks, aside from relieving back tension, is that I feel a lot more focussed and mentally refreshed. Getting out of the house for a walk and having a proper break sometimes completely changes my mind set. I no longer feel like I’m just racing around in a hamster wheel, but I actually take a step back and re-prioritise my tasks in a meaningful way, rather than just rushing to get everything done as soon as possible. And last but not least, I feel more creative again and I have the headspace for new ideas and finding ways to do things in a better way.
Overcoming comparing and guilt
When we all started working from home, people’s workloads came up a lot in conversations. At some point in virtually every meeting, people seemed to mention how busy they were. And I was busy too, with all the marketing re-planning and running of existing projects or shifting them into the virtual world – but even though I thought I was working very hard, it felt like some workmates were online all the time. I then started feeling uneasy because I thought maybe I should be doing more, I should be online more or maybe I need to come up with more stuff to do.
My lesson learnt from this: I hadn’t even realised that I was actually feeling guilty until I read an email from our head of HR, which included a few tips on how to deal with this entire situation. The first one was: ”Don’t feel guilty”, others were about the importance of breaks, not dwelling on the negatives etc. These emails and messages from our HR team were very useful to me. Speaking to some of my friends at work also helped put my head back into the right place. It made me realise that my role and my work is as individual as I am, and only I can decide how I can structure my work and personal time so it works out best for me and to get the job done.
The importance of “me-time”
Before I came to Australia, I had been single for around 5 years. It wasn’t always great and I did struggle with feelings of loneliness at times, but I sure did have a lot of time for myself, which I very much enjoyed. I have a lot of hobbies and I truly never had any issues filling my time with things that I love – I actually still felt like I didn’t have enough time for all my interests, despite the fact that I was on my own! In addition to that, I also had quite a long commute in London (around an hour), and this was my time for listening to inspiring podcasts, or reading. Moving to Sydney, the commute reduced from an hour to 20 minutes and now that I’m working from home in Perth, I get up and go pretty much straight to my laptop. When my workday is done, Liam comes back from work and we usually spend the evening together.
My lesson learnt from this: When you’re working from home full-time, it’s easy to just completely neglect “me-time” – especially if you live with someone with whom you have many common interests anyway. What I’ve realised is that, even if it’s tempting and wonderful to spend time with people (physically or virtually), it’s really good to sometimes just create a little bit of time for yourself. Taking a walk in the park, going to the beach, doing some yoga or just reading my book can turn me into a different person altogether after a busy day.
