WHY OUR BRAINS ARE SCRAMBLING

Two weeks, that’s all I had. A self-imposed deadline. Would I be able to pull off what would be nothing short of a miracle in a mere two weeks? The last time I set out to do this, I had time on my side and it took me two months to achieve my goal. The number two in common but the timeline - oh so tight!

My employers wanted me to come back to full time work after my maternity leave was over, I wanted to work part-time, that’s what my mother did - worked half the day and spent the rest of the day with my brother and I. I wanted the same.

They gave me two weeks to decide. I knew I had to find another job, one that met my needs. Could I do it? My mind went back to the time I was failing my first year at university, learning in what became the fourth language that I speak. I will spare the details for another time, long story short - I passed all my subjects with the exact marks I needed. I recalled the tools and techniques I relied on at that time to stay focused and reach my goal. Using these very skills I had refined years ago, I set out to achieve what seemed practically impossible. Did I succeed? Hell yes! Experience fine tuned skills that I had developed enabling me to reach my goal.

This is why what is currently happening has me and so many of us feeling dazed, confused and scrambling. Our minds work in this way - when faced with a difficult situation, we try to refer back to a similar situation in the past so as to draw on the tools and techniques developed at that time with the intention to apply them to our current situation. The problem is that we have no such situation in the past to refer to, hence our minds are scrambling. We may go through a roller coaster of emotions which swing from one end to the other. Remember that it is okay to feel this way. We are in this together. We are doing the best we can with what we’ve been given and waking up to another day is a gift in itself. We’ve got this.