In the last two months, you (or someone you know) have been flung into “survival mode.”

When we think about survival mode, it’s easy to assume that it only applies to poor villagers in a remote part of third-world countries where food and water are hard to come by. This is the ultimate survival mode—where everyday men, women and children live hour by hour, at the mercy of a miracle to provide for their basic necessities.

With this image in our minds, it’s easy to assume that westerners in a wealthy country like America could never experience something similar.

But survival mode is more complex: it is both real and also relative to your individual situation. A more inclusive picture of survival mode is one where we do a few things: