How to Thrive at Home During Coronavirus Distancing

The recent recommendations to practice self distancing and self quarantining to help slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) may be causing a number of emotions for you. You might find the idea of keeping busy in your home-bound state daunting. If you’re a working parent with children, you may be juggling the new situation of having kids at home who still require an education strategy, while you also try to complete your day job at home. You may have a spouse working at home, too. Whatever your situation, you may worry you’ll go a little stir-crazy at home. 

In addition, the constant feed from the news and social media about COVID-19, can easily create fear and panic. These emotions elicit a stress response in our bodies that impacts the immune system, which isn’t helpful to our goal of maintaining great health. If you have children at home, these intruding emotions can also pass onto them.

So how do we maintain a positive outlook amidst negative external influences? How do we shift our perspective away from being “housebound” and potential boredom? By consciously CHOOSING to stay positive, to come from a place of preparedness rather than panic, and by keeping ourselves busy with mentally enriching, physically-benefiting and relationally-focused activities. 

This is a time where we can really focus on the Six Facets of Wellness™ that we promote at Go Live Abundance. We generated a quick list of activities you can do in each of the six areas. All six are important to your health, so try to pick something from one or two facets to do every day. Challenge yourself to do as many of these things as you can – we promise, there are way more activities than you’ll actually have time for, meaning boredom won’t even cross your mind!

Focusing on these activities will help you be productive and future-focused. They’ll help you feel better physically and mentally. Filling your time with things that support your wellness, rather than detract from it, will have you approaching life from a new, refreshed perspective. Use this time to benefit your health and the health of your loved ones!

Move Your Body

1. Walk your stairs. Thank your legs they can do that. For real!
2. Do inchworms, walking lunges and forward jump lunges down your hallway.
3. Do push-ups.
4. Plank.
5. Do couch-supported squats.
6. Dance wildly to music that feeds your soul! Let the music move you. 
7. Complete a guided full body workout.
8. Go for a walk or run outside (with your pup if you have one!).
9. Hike outside, on a trail, in a forest or tree’d area, and take in the earth’s rejuvenating powers.
10. Give yourself a massage. If you don’t have any massage tools on hand, use a tennis ball, golf ball, or your hands. Let us know if you need help with this. 

Connect to Self

1. Once again, get outside. Nature has a positive effect and can do wonders for relieving anxiety and stress. 
2. Rearrange a room. Change things up for a new perspective on your room and your outlook. 
3. Decorate something. Use your creativity to open up to new possibilities. This creativity tends to overflow into other areas of your life. 
4. Declutter. A cluttered space makes for a cluttered mind. Free up space and feel the calm come in (and the accomplishment of getting it done).
5. Clean out a drawer. Same as #4
6. Do a craft. Get in the zone where you lose track of time, focused only on the task on hand.
7. Organize a space. That storage closet, your garage, your kitchen drawers…
8. Write your thoughts in a journal. Writing things down helps us process them. 
9. Write down a list of 50 things you’re grateful for – seriously!
10. Be still. What do you hear? What speaks to you?
11. Read. Keep learning and growing. Or just get lost in the story. 
12. Wash your sheets. You’ll love the freshness when you get in bed. 
13. Open a window, let the outdoors in and air out a room. 
14. Watch a comedy – TV show, movie, or a stand-up comedian. (I watched Nate Bergatze on Netflix and laughed out loud! – Irene)
15. Sit silently and sip your morning beverage of choice while looking out a window in your home, without turning on the lights – taking in every detail (the smell of your coffee/tea, the sounds you hear outside, the view you see, etc.).
16. Assess your goals and set new ones if needed (then read this blog).
17. Take a pause from social media and the news. Updates are good, but you don’t need them every hour.
18. Research a travel destination you’d like to visit. Even if you can’t make detailed plans right now, start thinking about ideas for when you can. We all need things to look forward to and get excited about.  

Connect with Others

1. Call a friend you haven’t talked to in a long time.
2. Video chat / FaceTime with family or friends.
3. Plan a virtual “girls” or “guys” night with your friends. Tell everyone to get their favorite drink, make themselves an appetizer or snack and then jump on a group Facetime or video chat session.
4. Hold a virtual hangout with extended family.
5. Interact with your colleagues – if you’re working from home, you might be emailing more than having live interaction. Talk on the phone, video chat, etc.
6. Talk with your kids. Ask about their dreams, what they like to learn about most in school, what their favorite activities are, or ones that they’d like to try.
7. Plan activities to do with your kids – learning activities and other silly, fun ones.
8. Sit down and talk about your family goals with your spouse, then discuss them with your kids. Really reflect on your present-day life. Is your family overscheduled? Are you in tune with the happenings in each family member’s life? What about their daily emotions? Do you eat dinner together as a family regularly? If your answer is no to any of these things, what can you do to make some changes?
9. Learn a partner dance with your spouse via YouTube (waltz, salsa, two step, etc.).
10. Talk about future dreams, goals and plans with your spouse.

Sleep Well

1. Go to bed earlier.
2. Turn electronics off 2 hours before bed.
3. Sip warm tea an hour before bed.
4. Give yourself a massage (see #10 under Move Your Body), or ask your partner for one and give them one in return.
5. Don’t eat within 2 hours of bedtime.
6. Read a book in bed.
7. Take a bath or shower before bed.

Center Around Your Purpose

1. Take 15 minutes to reflect on what you think your purpose is in life.
2. Talk to your spouse about each other’s purposes in life – share what you each think each other’s purpose is.
3. Ask your children what their goals are and think about how you can help support them.
4. Think about your occupation – are you living out your purpose? Are you utilizing your talents and strengths? If not, how could you change that?
5. Ask yourself how you’re helping others. How are you helping yourself?
6. Connect with your source of higher power.
7. Ask yourself what you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t? How could you take one small step toward that goal?

Nourish Your Body

1. Challenge yourself to make something from scratch, without a recipe, using only things you already have in your kitchen.
2. Sit down and think about your nutrition goals. What are you doing well? What could you be doing better?
3. Feed your body something super nourishing.
4. Drink water – lots of it.
5. Clean out your fridge and pantry. You KNOW you have sauces and canned goods that are at least two years old in there.
6. Challenge yourself to make a meal using items from your fridge or pantry that are close to expiring OR just keep sitting there because you don’t know what to do with them.
7. Indulge a little. Make yourself that comfort meal, or your favorite dessert.
8. Bake something fun with your kids or loved one.
9. Attempt a recipe that intimidates you or that you’ve been wanting to make forever.
10. Grow a sourdough starter! Two weeks at home is a perfect time to get that wild yeast a brewin’. (My starter turns 3 years old this month and it’s one of the best things I’ve done for myself in the kitchen. – Brianna)
11. Check out our recipes and make one…or two…or three.
12. Admire your food. Be thankful for it. Slow down your eating. Savor each bite!
13. Be present in the joy of cooking. 
14. Lean toward health-focused foods. No, social distancing isn’t a free pass to live on cereal, pasta, frozen pizza, juice, sweets, etc.
15. Watch YouTube videos on proper knife handling, then try out your skills with some food prep
16. Support a local restaurant by ordering takeout.
17. Host a “Chopped” challenge in your kitchen.

Have fun! Make the most out of this time – it’s an opportunity for you to CHOOSE positive!

Advocates for your health,

Irene & Brianna