Pandemic offers real pivot for personal growth

Maureen Gaffney

Now is the time to harness periods of self-reflection during the Covid crisis into meaningful change

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October 03 2021 02:30 AM

During the past 18 months, as we faced the existential threat of a global pandemic, and especially during the long lockdowns, we have all had a lot of time to think about ourselves and what gives meaning to our lives. Many of us have made heartfelt resolutions to change the way we live.

Now, as we return to normal, and before we’re swallowed up in the usual busyness, it’s an opportune time to deepen that understanding of our own development and our capacity to change. A good starting point is to identify the high points, the low points and the turning points in our lives so far.

Unless things are going really well, what comes most readily to mind are the low points in life — those times when you suffered a loss or setback, when you felt miserable, vulnerable or beset by self-doubt.

Why? Because your brain has a strong negativity bias and is hyper-alert to any situation that signals threat, not only to your physical survival, but to your psychological safety, your self-esteem or your status. That is why memories of such experiences are particularly intense and last a long time.

But in every life there are also high points, times when you felt happy or discovered a talent or strength in yourself or were full of energy and optimism. If you have had a hard life or have been through a particularly tough period, it may take a bit more effort to recall the high points, but they’re there waiting for you to remember and explore.

When you think about yourself in that way, you will find you have three distinct selves or modes of being in the world.

The first is your ordinary, everyday self, the way you are most days — reasonably competent, fairly happy, managing things. You feel you’re doing an OK job in your family and your work, but maybe not in a way that is stretching you, and you know or suspect you are capable of more.

The second is what may be called your best self, when you manage to break out of that ordinary mode, sweep past the “what ifs” and “if onlys” and connect to what is great in you. This is when you find the energy to cross some hidden threshold to reach a high point in yourself and in your life.

The third self is what you might call your worst self — the times when you feel blocked or stymied, your confidence shaken and disorganised by too much stress. You feel wounded, with all your vulnerabilities on show and your strengths transformed into weaknesses.

Everything you touch seems to go wrong. You make stupid mistakes and mismanage relationships. These are the really low points in your life.

Why is it important to recall and explore those high and low points? Because each experience, good or bad, has bespoke lessons to teach you that will help you to understand yourself and your life more deeply.

The trick is to use those lessons to make this a turning point in your life, a point of departure to achieve the changes you want to make and to implement the resolutions you made during the pandemic.

At first, you may be doubtful, subject to what Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman calls the “end-of-history bias” — the illusion that you will change less in the future than you have in the past.

Well, the weight of psychological evidence is against you on that one, because we are all growing and developing from the moment we are born to the moment we die. How liberating an idea is that?

We also know psychological development throughout life is not a linear process, but rather a series of transitions, turning points and transformations.

Some research suggests adult life unfolds in a sequence of relatively stable periods lasting between seven and 10 years.

During the stable period, you build a life structure that mainly centres on family, friends, work and a personal interest or project.

These are the elements of your life in which you invest most of your time and energy and which define the character of your living during that period.

Each stage is book-ended by significant transition periods, lasting between three and five years, a large boundary zone in which you get ready to end one stage of your life and enter another.

That means you spend nearly 50pc of your life in transition, changing, or thinking about changing, some aspect of your life, assessing whether the structure you created is still satisfying or needs to be changed in the light of new needs, either inside yourself or in those who are important to you.

In addition, as you approach the end of one decade and the beginning of another, you start to think more deeply about where your life is going, about its meaning and purpose or the lack of either.

The link between how satisfied you are with your life and your physical and psychological well-being is stronger during these transitions than at other times.

That’s why the beginning of each decade — turning 40 or 60 or any of the “Big O” birthdays — hold particular significance for many people.

These transition periods are key opportunities for transformation and development, when you have a chance to loop back to repair earlier unfinished business. And then there are also the turning points that are silent and private — the beginning or end of a significant relationship, a new opportunity or an unexpected crisis.

Cumulatively, this means your life is always a mix of stability and change and your development a function of the experiences that have shaped you and the new circumstances in which you find yourself. But at every stage, and most acutely at points of transition, the opportunity opens up again to find a new balance, a better way to meet our psychological needs.

The key point is this: at any stage, we are never fully formed. The story is never over. The story is always of a life in progress.

Dr Maureen Gaffney is a clinical psychologist, broadcaster and author. Her new book is ‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’ (Penguin)