Yes ! This was exactly it.
The 2nd half of 2019 was some of the best time of my life because of this.
It's been quite jarring to see how instantly my mental health deteriorated the second the lock down started.
How did you find that out? Really interested whether I fall in the same group. I feel like I agree with you; I haven't been exercising as much because I can't go to a studio/gym to exercise, and the deterioration of both physical health and mental well-being is very apparent now.
To be honest, I know everyone wants to have a "growth mindset", i.e. the belief that if you're not good at something that you can diligently "face your fears" and overcome it, but at least for me I've come to the conclusion that I'm just constitutionally not cut out to be an entrepreneur. I don't know if it's my genes or my early upbringing or what, but I've tried all the motivation/self-direction/anti-procrastination tricks in the book, and it just doesn't work for me. There was definitely a sense of loss when I came to that conclusion, but I've found that I'm able to thrive when I have an environment with more structure.
I do agree on your last point. Part willpower, part understanding what works best for each of us. Accepting that we might not be everything that we want to be is hard, but growth is discovering the paths that we can otherwise take.
I think this will resonate with a significant subset of the HN crowd. I really thrive on externally-enforced structure (didn't take long to discover I made a terrible entrepreneur, but found a good niche as a startup employee). I've set my life up around having different events and places I need to be: classes at my gym, took up some in-person Spanish lessons, etc. When all those avenues shut down, I found it incredibly difficult to motivate myself to do anything. My physical health has deteriorated as I get much less exercise now, and that has sort of spiraled with my mental well-being. It's been rough.