Staying sane during the hard times.
How to not let the chaos affect our creativity?
Dear Creators
We are amongst a bad time – dealing with a yearlong pandemic thrown at us and we know how hard it is to stay sane and creative when every time you open your social media. There’s either a cry for help or statistics showing how badly our country is hit by the pandemic. It takes a toll on your mental health and there’s so much you can avoid seeing when everywhere it is the same scenario.
While there are things you can do to make sure you do not fall of the edge and meanwhile help others as much as you can.
Engage in expressive outlet: Researchers have showed that indulging in art as an expression can help manage anxiety, stress and even improves health. If you’re a writer but can’t write anything then try a different form of art to indulge and find an outlet in that. Don’t force your art but rather pick up a new one.
Get into a flow state: Have you ever been so completely immersed in an activity that you lost all sense of time? You may have been experiencing a mental state known as “flow”. Research done by the Harvard professor Teresa Amabile shows that people who experience flow report higher levels of creativity, productivity, and happiness. You can cultivate a flow state without intentionally trying to be creative. Think about the moments when you’re most likely to lose track of time: What are you doing in these moments? Is it going for a run? Reading a good book?
Broaden your network: Start a book club, or join network of people in areas of our interest. Research shows that diverse networks enhance creativity and that knowledge diversity positively correlates with individual creativity.
We all by now know the importance of virtual networks and services like Zoom, Google meet or even houseparty makes it much easier for us to connect virtually and build networks.
To read full visit this link4. Make time for “Me-Time”
Do you feel so busy that you don’t have the bandwidth to think about your own needs, let alone do anything about them? Maybe you’re constantly thinking about work, or worry that you’re not proving yourself or your value if you aren’t available 24/7 – especially if you’re working remotely.
Perhaps you’re juggling childcare, eldercare, pet care, or other family commitments. How do you carve out time for yourself, your health, and your needs when you’re always on?5. Zoom’s Immersive View could make video calls feel a bit more in-person
Zoom is rolling out a video background feature called Immersive View that could make video calls feel a bit more like an office meeting — or at least look a lot more like one. Zoom will automatically place attendees in a variety of built-in virtual scenes like a board room or auditorium, or the meeting host can manually place them themselves.
6. Does the pandemic separate us when we need people the most? Grieving in a pandemic is much more difficult as we stare blankly outside the window, our phones constantly ringing for condolences.
“ I will never know how grieving this death would have been different if we weren’t still in the pandemic. I do think it made the worst moments even worse. It trapped us in our car. It kept us from him in the hospital. It separated us from our families. It locked us in our home with the memories of our lost family member.”
7. COVID-19 took mental health to a dark place.
"It's affected a third of the population globally," said Luana Marques, an associate professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School who's been tracking mental health in the pandemic. "Imagine if we were saying a third of the population had pneumonia. We would be alarmed. We need to think about mental illness as a brain health problem, we've got to be alarmed."
"For young people, peer relationships are much more important, you can demonstrate that on brain scans, they're much more susceptible to peer exclusion. With loneliness, what most research shows is that it's the length of experience of feeling lonely (that's damaging) rather than short-sharp experiences, and for many young people it has been a long time."
Some other interesting reads we came across:
Disinformation on YouTube Divided A Dad and Daughter
A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right? Read here.
If you post a video of someone rescuing an animal in danger, it'll get lots of views - so now people put the animal in danger themselves to stage the rescue. It happens enough that YouTube has had to write a new rule banning this. The internet is people, and if you give people incentives, they will find new ways to game them. Read here
We hope you all are taking good care of yourself and staying indoors.
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