You know that weird feeling you have right now and can’t define? It is a combination of fear, anxiety, grief, boredom and disconnection. You might feel it all day or as you jolt awake in a panic at 3 am.
Part of the world wrestles with non-stop chaos and struggle in the hospitals – and my heart and respect go to the workers on the front line of the battle and to the sick and their families.
The rest of us are following orders and doing our part by staying home. We hunker down in front of Netflix, laugh in virtual happy hours via Zoom and fret about the news.
Every day you flounder in a wild wave of feelings that are hard to describe, jumble together and sometimes don’t make sense.
That is the feeling of being unmoored.
Losing the edges of the pool
One of the great things about being a coach is that I have lots of friends who are also coaches. One such friend helped clarify this feeling of being unmoored.
She told a story of learning to scuba dive during her high school years. She took scuba diving as a PE credit to avoid having to play dodge ball in regular gym class – the non-athletic of us can relate to that!
Enjoying the class and practice sessions, she learned to work the equipment, follow safety rules and explore the bottom and sides of the school pool.
Then came time for the final exam which involved a field trip to a local lake. Preparing to dive, she excitedly suited up, checked her equipment and jumped into the lake. Once under water, her joyful anticipation turned to uncertainty and then to fear and a full-on panic attack.
The lake was cloudy, dense and uncertain. She lost her sense of up and down. Without edges like those of the pool, she felt lost and alone in an open wildness. The comfortable structure of the pool was gone. She panicked.
Fortunately, she took some deep breaths, reoriented herself to the lake, found inner calm and completed the exam.
Unmoored as an entrepreneur
Although it has intensified a 1000 times in the last few weeks, this feeling of being unmoored actually started for me last year.
After decades in corporate life, I left to start a solo entrepreneurial company doing coaching and consulting. I had been planning for this transition for years – and, yet, I still struggled with the change.
I felt unmoored.
Working at home for myself for the first time, I struggled to get focused, set priorities and move forward.
In 2019, I practiced all of the currently popular social isolation activities like bingeing on Netflix and long walks.
I even fell into the sourdough starter and bread baking vortex that is currently dominating Instagram.
For once, I was a trend setter!
Over time, I lost interest in those activities and yearned for more purpose and routine in my daily life. That motivated me to focus and work harder on building my business.
Like my friend the scuba diver, I took deep breaths, reoriented to the new reality, found my inner calm and took action.
Unmoored in the pandemic
You might relate to feeling unmoored in this new and abruptly different COVID 19 world. Plans and expectations have changed and the future remains cloudy and unclear.
Most of us are working from home now – while also homeschooling kids, hunting for toilet paper and negotiating with family and housemates for quiet time and space.
Our basic freedoms and feeling of health and security are challenged.
If you are seeking magical solutions to feeling better, this article is not for you.
The best I can offer is to help define the feeling of being unmoored. By naming it, we can find a way through to the other side.
Control what you can and know you are not alone.
Believe that like a disoriented scuba diver, you will stabilize, figure out which way is up and discover the new structure of your current and future worlds.
Take a deep breath, reorient, find your inner calm and take action.
