Well-being experiment now and when it's all over

Before the lockdown most people were time poor. Life is slowly getting back to normal but a vast majority of the population is still out of work, not going to school, not commuting (that’s at least an extra 2-3 hours of free time a day) and short on the regular things that kept people busy in pre-quarantine times.

Article by Bella Trost

In the beginning it might have felt weird to have more free time but we got used to it. (The many people with no kids or not key workers). We started to look after our social, emotional, physical, and mental well-being. Doing more exercise, studying more, learning hobbies, creating art, spending time with loved ones...

Even if there’s stress in not knowing what will happen when it’s all over, this lockdown for many – the fortunate ones who’ve managed to stay healthy and financially stable – has had beneficial effects.

Overworked people have caught up on their sleep and feel good when they wake up for a change. Instead of the daily routine of waking up early, spending the day in the office, going home, watching TV and getting ready to do it all again the next day, people started to do things that are meaningful to them.

Of course I can’t speak for everyone but based on what I have seen around me it seems that many of us actually want to exercise and want to spend more time in the kitchen making healthy food and treating our body and soul well. Nobody has to do it but people feel like it, and now it fits into their lives as often as they previously wanted it to.

“Stress, time and other lifestyle factors make genuine barriers to healthy living, and when those barriers are removed people become self-motivated to do things that promote overall well-being”. (1) 

Maybe we have started to eat better, exercise more, drink less and in general just live healthier. But this situation won’t last forever. We had a chance to experience what it is like to take control of our life and health. It feels good, right? So here’s the challenge: how are we going to integrate our current lifestyle into the new conditions we’ll have when the lockdown is over?

(1) Newsletter of BTN academy