Staying Positive in a Hate Filled World

Drugs?

Get a puppy!

Lower your expectations.

I’m struggling with this one right now.

Seriously, there are some things I am finding helpful, but they sound kind of twee.

Maybe they ARE twee?

1. I try to decide what I can actually DO to try, in my opinion, to make a difference. For me, this means supporting organisations that I think are helping. For, these include the US ACLU, because I see them as the most effective option to fight the worst of the current US government’s attacks on human rights. I support a number of Australian organisations whose missions I support
Many of these are environmental

For world stuff, I support a micro finance organisation and, with my particular beliefs, this means I target women for loans.

I try to recognise that I can’t change everything and I don’t have the finances to give what I once could, but I do what I can.
You might consider doing something similar for whatever causes you feel to be most positive in your mind.

2. I remind myself that what we see in media does not reflect all that is happening. I seek out information about what is going ok. I take breaks from the news if I need to. I’m pretty old now, and while I recognise that this is a very scary time, I try to put the ebbs and flows of history into some proportion.

3 I try...and often fail..to live in a way that doesn’t harm the planet. This is very much a work in progress.

4. I try to enjoy and be mindful of what is happening NOW. I’m terrible at mindfulness, but I’m working on it!

5. I am actively working on compassion. While being a hard headed agnostic, I have a weird feeling that compassion for self and others is somehow a good force in the world. I’m likely deluded, but I can’t see that I’m doing any harm, at worst.

6 I’m increasing exercise and, having been forced recently into sudden retirement, I am actively seeking connection and trying to find ways in which I can use some of the unfamiliar the extra time in ways that put my beliefs into practice.

7. I try to have fun. Loving being able to swim a lot now, for instance.


I do hope this doesn’t sound too pathetic!

Wishing you well.

Borat Sister-

Thank you that is very helpful and surely not pathetic.

P.S. - I see that you live in Australia. I hope that you are not near the fires.

Pretty much everyone is near a fire right now, but thank you.

I’m in south Australia, which is a big chunk of the bottom of Oz, in the middle.

It’s two of the eastern states, Victoria and NSW that are really in trouble right now. Our states are much bigger than the US ones, so the really big fires are a long way away.

We have had two really big ones here, with terrible losses, and they can’t be put out, so it’s a waiting game, really.

Take complete control of who you are as a person - something that is entirely within your power to do. The first step to that is taking responsibility for every aspect of who you are, how you react, where you are going as a person.

You aren't necessarily going to get away with financial freedom etc, but who you are within the finances of where you are, is entirely within your control.

This one is more difficult. Part of it is the above - because when you are in control of who you are, you become less frustrated in general.

Borats sister gave plenty of good examples that I would phrase as "Find out what you value, and move towards that, and support & encourage other people who share the same values"

Some of it is realising that every person is individual, and must take responsibility for their own self/beliefs/values/actions...ie...don't take their doings personally.

Frustration occurs all the time when our hopes aren't being met in the way we hope to have them met. Often it's because our hopes are unrealistic (eg everyone being courteous/generous/####/etc), and where this occurs, we should review our hopes to be more realistic...unless we have a plan to change the status quo to make our hopes come true (but if you don't, then modify your hopes that aren't being met, or prepare to be frustrated). This too, is another way of saying 'don't take it personally'

1. I can’t linger over disturbing photos and articles—they consume the news, but I try to get a gist of what’s happening and get my mind on something else.

My daughter in law doesn’t allow the news on their TV and they don’t speak trump’s name.

2. I sought out a career that could help me be a tiny part of one solution years ago—and that has helped SO much. I think if I found myself working in a situation that added to the problem rather than helped, I’d be in inner turmoil.

In lieu of a job, *volunteering doing something to help people or animals* or fighting fracking or visiting people trapped in nursing homes... knowing you have carved out your little piece of the world and staked your claim for goodness and healing can make you smile when you open your eyes every morning instead of retrieving whatever fresh horror assaulted you the day before.

I think most of us are trying to deal with the same overbearing emotional
fatigue you’re talking about. I’m not victorious, but I experience little victories every day.

Good luck.

Lash-

Thank you.

What is your job?

I teach middle-schoolers in a Title One school. The only low points are how stupid administration actually prevents me from doing my job. The connections with students are miraculous every day.

We just started a Social Issues unit in Honors and Harriet Tubman in reg ed classes and I am nearly walking ten feet off the ground.

I seek out positives to dwell on. I don't block out the tragic and disgusting entirely, but I try to grasp the gist and move on. It more and more seems like bailing a sinking boat with a styrofoam cup, but I am trying.

Fighting cancer since 2012 has focused me on just how wonderful the world really is. It doesn't mean ignoring the bad, just putting it into perspective.

Life is good and its a privilege to be here no matter how longer it is.

Study Christianity and Buddhism and discover what they have in common.

Accept forgiveness/salvation from sin and detach from the notion that doing so is going to immediately liberate you from all sin and the world.

We have to go on living in this world plagued by evil and sin, but we don't have to do so in a way that subjects our spirits to the negative temptations they bring.

Bad things happen but if you are still alive to witness them, you're blessed; and if you still have enough sense to discern right and wrong and you are repentant for the wrong, both within yourself and beyond your control; then you are blessed.

Accept the fact that every trial we get through simultaneously delivers us from the torment of that particular trial.

If you believe in the possibility that the soul/consciousness continues beyond death; then you should realize that we have to go on looking forward to deliverance from whatever negativity we are experiencing, because without it things would just go on getting worse indefinitely, and that would defy the basic logic of suffering and relief from suffering as relative states of subjective experience. Suffering and its opposite must alternate within us by virtue of the fundamental nature of sentience. It's just a question of how long suffering takes to cycle back around to relief and thus bliss.