Wars, floods, fires, politics, police shootings, child shootings, high levels of divorce, an increase in mental health issues, toxic water or food, all are realities in our world today; a world that is smaller and more accessible than ever before due to technology. If you watch television, listen to the radio, have an electronic pad or smart phone, you don't just read about these earthly challenges, you can see them up close and personal. The news is on a 24 hour cycle so we don't miss a thing. Even so, there is gun violence that we don't hear about; famine that is too massive to imagine; refugee crises in too many countries to count. Add to all of this your early messages about life, tragedy, trauma and feelings. Yet, you are expected to go to work, care for a partner, child or aging parent, buy groceries, pay bills, take a shower and put one foot in front of the other. Are there days when you throw your hands up in anguish? Shake your head in despair? Shed a tear of frustration? Wonder how you can get beyond all the negativity to a positive outlook for your present and future?
Life is a struggle; the key is to travel through your obstacles with grace; so say the Buddhists, if I may paraphrase. How to do so is the question.
Here are a few suggestions that many of my clients have used with great satisfaction over the years:
1. Take a news vacation. Give yourself a day or a week of no news! The world will go on. You will eventually find out what happened. This technique will allow you to reboot (pun intended).
2. While on your news vacation, find a favorite calming practice. Plug into music, meditate, try yoga or Tai Chi, draw, sing, dance, walk in the woods or on the beach; find your peaceful place and go there regularly.
3. Recoonnect with gratitude. Are you grateful for family? friends? a roof over your head? food on your table? your job or career? school? a working body part? the sun? the rain? Find a way to acknowledge that appreciation out loud. "Thank-you foot, for working after surgery." "I am grateful for my beautiful garden."
4. Find a way to bring hope into your daily life. When we hope, the future is possible. Take baby steps. When we are not used to wishing for ourselves or when our dreams have been dashed, we gingerly enter back in to the world of optimism. Give yourself permission to hope for waking with a smile tomorrow; just because.
You can enter into pessimism quite easily and stay there with little effort. Changing the course of your attitude, thoughts and feelings takes a bit more work, but can become a healthy coping skill and habit. As George Harrison wrote and sang "Here comes the sun and I say, it's all right!"
