The paper presents the first part of the results of a planned longitudinal survey. Researchers asked the question: What is people’s quality of life during the COVID19 pandemic in its growth, peak, and subsidence phases. The survey was conducted based on a sample of adult Poles in electronic form. Three hundred fifty-three comprehensive responses were collected. Respondents were asked about the quality of life, coping with the objectively difficult situation, and about resource gains and losses over the past six months. The results obtained indicate that a high global quality of life correlates with higher gains and minor losses, as well as coping with the difficult situation through planning, positive reframing, emotional support seeking and reduced substance use tendency, low self-blaming, avoidance, and disengagement. Factors that may reduce people’s quality of life during the COVID 19 pandemic are low resource gains and losses experienced over the last six months preceding the pandemic, and coping strategies that are characteristic of those experiencing helplessness. Also, helplessness-based coping strategies were found to mediate both the relationship between resource gains and quality of life and resource loss and quality of life.