Getting the best out of the isolation

Covid-19 outbreak was surely not in the cards. Even us, doctors, were not expecting on such a virulent, lethal disease outbreak. We — and most sanitary authorities in the world — were prepared for seasonal diseases like influenza, dengue and even ebola, but surely not for a new virus that could cause severe respiratory distress and coagulation disturbs with such a spreading capacity.

The SARS-CoV 2 disruption may have gotten us with pants in hand, but we surely weared them right away. Within a month of epidemic outside China, we already had its full genome sequenced, knew how the virus spread and even proposed some experimental treatments, some of them being tested right now in Brazil.

Nevertheless, abide the epidemic is going to last for some more months (since isolation reduces the speed of spread, but also makes the epidemic last longer), people in lockout, like you and me, need to start using time the best way possible. Isolation is not vacation, and the beat goes on. Since a safe vaccine or effective medicine are still being developed, we can expect several social distancing weeks more.

In this article, I will teach you how to turn your months home, away from work and loved ones, into something positive for your life.

1. Motivating yourself

As a doctor, I hear complaints all day. I hear old people complaining on their back pain; young people on their anxiety; mothers on their not-growing children. Usually, I am able to solve people’s complaints by solving their problems, either with medications or advice. Doctors are assessors. We want to help people any way we can; from their end-stage liver disease to their heartbreak after a split up.

Lately, what I have been most hearing is, apart from questions about coronavirus, people saying they are fed up with staying home. They say they have finished netflix catalogue, that their magazines are all read, that they already had as much sex as they didn’t have in the last months, that they already slept long hours, that they already did those 2 hours of yoga a day, and they are still bored and feeling senseless at home.

This is a true matter of concern. Isolation and boredom can be harmful to mental health as much as workplace-related harassment or a toxic relationship. This is why in-prision solitary confinement is the most feared situation an intern can face; largely used as punishment for wrong deeds performed by inmates and an instrument of psychological control against the criminals.

Hence Homo sapiens is a biological machine programmed to bond with other individuals and fight for its survival, which is nowadays’ work hours, you need to put yourself into some challenging in order to be alive — to feel alive, which is the same. Once this challenging can’t come from work or earning the heart from the person you are into, you need to start challenging yourself right now. This will transform your quarantine into a self-developing, and even enjoyable, experience.

In order to do something, you need to get motivated; and to get motivated, you need to change your pattern of thinking. But, in order to do it, the shift must come from the inside, not the outside.

Mosab Alkhteb, writer here on Medium and founder of the blog Worthy Inside, has a different way of seeing worth and esteem. At some point of my life, when I was feeling low and useless, I came across his site, and it completely changed my pattern of thinking. I eased my anxiety and started giving myself not the worth I wanted, but the worth I indeed had. In spite of that, the spirit of his work is one: stop trying to control everything.

The desire to control everything is actually nothing but an attempt to avoid getting hurt. It’s a symptom that we’re not comfortable with, the possibility of failure/uncertainty. We dread uncertainty, so we try to seek ultimate certainty, which we’ll never get. An empty circle that will lead to nowhere.
-Mosab Alkhteb

You are the biggest responsible for your life, but 90% of the things happening to you right now were not from your pick. You didn’t chose the country you were born, your name, sex, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, family or the first school you went to. You didn’t even pick the size of your fingers. You are a combination of random genes combined and translated into proteins that build you up. You only get to decide if you are having eggs or bacon to breakfast; or if you will become an artist, mathematician or a lawyer. When, with who and how isn’t much of your call.

So, the first step is: accept yourself the way you are. Most people want to change themselves: they want to be taller, or thinner, or have bigger breasts, or a smaller nose. In some degree, this is healthy: losing weight, for instance. But getting a new nose won’t change who you are, so capture this: you need to resign and even be grateful for being who you are. Your perception of your “self” will raise a lot, I swear.

Most people look themselves in the mirror and see ugly and useless, when they are actually seeing beautiful and meaningful. Beauty is anything that can be loved, and so have a meaning. This is better explained here, although it is not my intention to unfold on that subject.

The second step is to define an objective. It can be anything: from turning a 1970 VW Bettle into an electric car or founding an organisation, every effort invested into what you desire is worth. Life can’t be resumed in having a job only to get drunk at the weekend with occasional travels.

Motivation is about meaning, and the meaning of life is up to you to decide.

Let’s make a mental exercise: imagine that thing you always wanted, but never had — it can be even a shaped body. Imagine yourself having it, how would that feel? Now, relate that feeling of joy to your obstination of having it, and every time you wake up in the morning, you will feel the same while you work for its achievement, until it is done. This is how I have motivated myself since middle school, and how I still motivate myself after even greater objectives, which is the secret of motivation: never be satisfied with your conquers, for you don’t die when you stop living, you die when you stop dreaming. If you don’t have a project of something bigger for your life, you are living the wrong way.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
-Viktor Frankl

2. Changing your thinking

Knowledge is the most scarce resource of an economy. Not gold or diamonds, but knowledge and the creative ways it can be employed. The more knowledge you have, the more valuable you and your work are — no wonder why people who study less tend to earn less, and people who study more tend to earn more. It is not about meritocracy, but about creating value through labor, in a way you produce something that is demanded — which usually requires expertise.

After economic crises, wars or environmental disasters — covid-19 can be considered a natural catastrophe, lato sensu — , from the moment everything is damaged or even left to pieces, money is no good. In a scenario where we face inflation, scarcity of food and homelessness, a dollar bill is as useful as cigarette paper, since there’s nothing to buy. Money for nothing. The one and only thing that can reedificate a community is necessity-oriented labor, which involves the knowledge of engineers, construction masons, biologists, military, doctors and even cooks — to provide food for everyone needing.

You double your income for every 5 years you add up to your formal studies. In Brazil, having finished high school, one make around 1500 BRL (300 USD) per month. With an undergraduated degree (except from medicine), one will make around 2900 BRL (580 USD); and if getting a 6-month specialisation plus a MBA or a professional master’s degree, one could now earn a little more than 6000 BRL (1200 USD), which already would put this one among the 10% richest of Brazil.

Notice that, logically, the more you study, the rarer you become — there are less PhDs than graduates — , and more value you add up to your work (a neurosurgeon is more capable, technically, than a general practioner — who studied less, for instance). Whereas developed countries buy the kg of gold for USD 41,000 from exporting countries, they buy an ounce of talented brains for much, much more. Rich countries fericiously compete for the best minds, a phenomenon that happens even among First World nations, and this can be easily understood from all brilliant people who emigrated to America, such as Nikola Tesla, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Stern and Albert Einstein himself.

Now, take all that free hours you’ve got in this quarantine with no time to end and sum them up to see what you could accomplish in your free time. For instance, you could reach CEFR level B2 (upper intermediate) in italian language by only preparing for 500 hours — which lines up to only five months if you study 3 hours a day. Imagine entering a 3 month-long isolation being illiterate on a foreign language and leaving it speaking and reading. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Pour over it that “bigger knowledge, bigger income” mentality and you’ll have the perfect justification to start right away.

That’s more than only changing your thinking. That’s changing your whole mindset into a productive, pro-active one.

Every day, when I go to sleep, I wonder how I’m going to get rich. I didn’t still found the magic formula for it, but I went from vague dreams of wealth to more or less organized plans of innovative business, which obviously I am not going to tell you. But this I can tell: my first million I will invest; the second, I will use to open an oncology clinic.

You see, there are no fast cars, manors, yachts or Ibiza parties with Dan Bilzerian in my dreams. Those will just be a consequence. My course of action is factual, as everybody’s life plans should be. Even if I never make a million, I will have at least dreamed of it, and as they say, you are as big as your dreams.

3. Changing your actions

Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges was a french dominican monk who lived between the 1800s and the 1900s. Being the greatest heir of Aquinas’ moral philosophy, he taught ethics at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and has done papal errands during the first World War.

Outside the theological field, Sertillanges, however, is best known for his masterpiece, The Intelectual Life, an essay on God’s Truth through reason. Scruton, a writer more praised than Sertillanges, shows us the presence of God by love, beauty and pureness, on his jewel The Face of God, whereas the french cleric embraces the sacred by acumen.

As Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologiae, Truth is the encounter of reality with the intellect, and Sertillanges shows us how this encounter happens, which is through studious work.

Namely, The Intelectual Life is a comprehensive guide to self-improvement through solitude and discipline; in particular, via mental development by studying and writing.

What matters most, likewise, is Sertillanges method. Altogether with his proposed routine of prayer and meditation, he claims that great deeds can be done by dedicating only two hours of one’s day to studies (in our case, to the project you will start developing).

I don’t have to tell you how to enjoy your day. You must be sick tired of listening about 5 am clubs, about changing your routine and stablishing a schedule. Yet you know all that, let me propose you the Sertillanges Method, either way:

I. We must think: what am I going to do for this century in which I live?
II. Manage your little time, which will be much if you add up every day of your life;
III. Achieving something takes investment, training and tenacity;
IV. To compose something, you must create an inner zone of silence;
V. A genius has a long, organized and intelligent patience;
VI. Live daily the heroic virtue of the worker;
VII. Escape freedom, but take the discipline path;
VIII. The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it.

In summary:
• Wake up and sleep everyday at the same hours;
• Meditate as you will;
• Get in touch with the transcendent, whichever you believe in;
• Dedicate two hours of your day, everyday, to work in your Project;
• Enjoy its completion as much as having it done.

More than just accomplishing a venture, after some weeks in-quarantine following the tips above, you will have developed yourself mentally and emotionally, and will improve your resilience to survive the dark times we are going through.

Tips:
• Your project can be a hobby, but not necessarily. It can be anything you need to get it done, like a rooftop reform or learning a new language. If you don’t have any projects in mind, I suggest the last one. Get occupied with something that will add real value to your life.
• Try to avoid things that release dopamine all the time, like chocolates, alcohol and porn. They are addictive, and can distract you during the quarantine or even jeopardy your routine.
• The sacred is part of the existential dimension of the human being. Even if you are an atheist, you need to meet the divine — in any of its forms — often. Visiting a place special for you, going to a date with your partner or watching childbirth are some ways of doing it if you don’t believe in praying.
• You don’t have to go to sleep 10 pm and wake up at 6 am every day, but try doing it at least 4 times a week.
• Allow yourself to fail. You don’t have to be successful the first way around.
• Don’t forget to spend quality time with your family and loved ones.