By Katherine King, "Seven Skills of Resilience: Practical ways to enhance well-being in these trying times" (Psychology Today, March 2020), good suggestions on staying OK:

• Cultivate a Belief in Your Ability to Cope – ... Take a moment to list the capacities that you can bring to bear in this current situation. Focus on those things that are not dependent on other people or outside circumstances, qualities like adaptability, intelligence, a sense of humor, courage, perseverance, resourcefulness, assertiveness, gratitude, and so on. ...
• Stay Connected With Sources of Support – ... This is not the time to say "I don't have the time" to be in touch with friends, loved ones, and other supportive people in your life. This is the time to double down on these connections. If you are busy, it might mean sending short text messages or scheduling a 10-minute phone call on one of your breaks. We are social animals, and we need a tribe. Tribes make us feel safe and supported. A tribe will deliver toilet paper to your doorstep in the middle of the night. A tribe will send you funny memes to get you through a hard day. ...
• Talk About What You're Going Through – ... If it's hard to find someone to talk to, you might take to journaling or sending letters or messages to loved ones who are far away. If you do have people nearby, one simple structure is to do a paired sharing activity. ..
• Be Helpful to Others – ... It can be very rewarding and empowering to help other people during hard times. When we see that we can make a difference and reduce someone else's pain, it reduces our own feelings of helplessness. It enhances our sense of control and efficacy in the world, which helps protect us from feeling overwhelmed ...
• Activate Positive Emotion – ... Find things that make you laugh, and commit to watching, following, and connecting with whichever of these sources most amuse you right now. ... there are countless potential positive emotions to cultivate. Think about how to feel gratitude, appreciation, love, intimacy, connection to the beauty of nature, the pleasure of a home-cooked meal, a "runners high", the joy of tapping your foot or dancing to music, the sense of accomplishment of completing a home maintenance project. ...
• Cultivate an Attitude of Survivorship – ... we are all going through hardship at this time, and that there are indeed circumstances beyond our control. We are not completely in control, but we aren't completely helpless either. Regardless of the reality, a survivor narrative is much more supportive of our mental health in the long run. ...
• Seek Meaning – ... You might believe that what matters most is how you treat others and connect to a deep personal sense of the value of family. ... Another simple practice is to read or re-read something meaningful or inspiring to you each day. There are websites that will send a poem or quote a day, or you could read a paragraph from a favorite self-help book or spiritual text. ...

... wise thoughts on how to bend, not break!

(cf Optimist Creed (1999-04-16), Sheryl Sandberg on the Hard Days (2016-05-22), Positive Thinking Techniques (2017-09-21), ...) - ^z - 2020-12-14