I Created a Quarantine ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and Here are the Rules

“I’m having an eat, pray, love moment” has become a self help phenomenon thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love (which later became a feature film starring Julia Roberts). The concept is simple -- after one woman’s seemingly perfect and happy life no longer brought her joy, she divorced her husband and left everything behind. She traveled to Italy, India and Indonesia to reawaken herself and become excited about life again.

Now, we all don’t have the luxury to travel internationally without a job, especially during a pandemic, but it got me thinking...why do I need to travel the world to reawaken my passion for life? With COVID-19, our lives are not what we remember them to be merely nine months ago and our routine is broken in various ways as we define a new normal. There’s no greater time to realign ourselves because waiting for our lives to “go back to normal” just won’t cut it.

While Gilbert traveled across the world to reignite her life, I’ve spent the last six months changing mine without leaving home. It started with a list of rules. I thought about what I can change about my life, my habits and my perspective right now, without physically going anywhere. It’s about creating new habits vs. a temporary feeling of joy. Here are the rules of my quarantine “eat, pray, love”...