Although it will be tempting to spend all day on social media or watching television, exercise is still a key component of mental wellness. Find time each day, ideally 30-minutes, where you can get your heart rate up and increase the blood flow to your brain. This has the effect of providing more oxygen to your brain, which will help with concentration, memory, and mental acuity, all of which are needed when people are facing challenges.

Try to stick to a routine. One of the reasons that orders to shelter-in-place or self-isolate are so difficult is because there is a major disruption to our routine. Human beings thrive on predictability and patterns of behavior. Because of this it’s important to find a way to establish new patterns of behavior that become predictable. It takes a little while for the neurons in our brain to adapt to the changes we’re facing but having a routine will speed up the process.

Don’t forget about normal and regular self-care. Specifically, be sure to follow the same dress and grooming patterns you have in the past. Just because you are not going out and socializing like you may have in the past doesn’t mean that it’s no longer important to take time to do the normal things. For example, brushing teeth, washing your face, doing your hair, putting on the kind of clothes you would normally wear, etc. There is value in sticking to these routines even when the reasons for doing so have changed.

Human behavior is goal driven and intended to meet our basic needs. When we can’t do things like we’ve always done them it makes it more difficult to get those needs met. However, it’s important to remember there is more than one way to meet the same need. For example, if you get your need for connection met though sitting down for coffee with a few friends each week, arrange a time when those friends can all video conference to talk and catch up over a cup of joe. Maybe even spruce up the place where you make the call from to look more like a coffee shop. While this won’t be the same as meeting in person, it can create a similar feeling and help you to meet your basic needs. Be creative with this and you’ll find yourself adapting to the new normal.