I grew up in a house on the edge of a small Missouri town, surrounded by woods. My sister and I discovered and mapped the trails through the woods behind that house. On our adventures, we found the fallen tree bridge over the stream that led to the pond. We sometimes discovered arrowheads or animal tracks, and we occasionally came running back inside when a snake (or our own shadows) scared us.
We were best friends and spent a lot of our childhood together outdoors. Our parents somewhat forced the issue with their refusal to pay for cable television. I often feel a part of a secret society of folks our age that lived just beyond the grasp MTV pop-culture (and Skinomax).
On a good day, with the antennas wrapped in enough aluminum foil and pointed ears akimbo, four public TV channels would reach up and over the big hill between our house and Kansas City to deliver news, sports, entertainment, and culture to our screen. We watched TV as a family – and for the most part, my parents chose which of those four channels we watched. So, in our case, this meant a lot of Murder She Wrote and 60 Minutes.
There was no 24-hour news channel in our house – there were still a few years before the AOL disc made its way into my computer (another story for another day). And no one had even dreamt of social media at this point.
When news happened, whether good or bad, there was an off switch. No matter how bad things got, a flag would ultimately appear on the TV, they would play the national anthem, and our program would dissolve into black-and-white fuzz. Then, we would be left in the dark woods to find perspective and heal... together.
I’m by no means suggesting I had an idyllic upbringing. There was pain, and there were struggles. There was a lot of not fitting in and wanting to be someone I was not. There was a lot of pressure to succeed. Yet, through everything, I was surrounded by a lot of space and time to get away from things. There was more quiet time than I knew what to do with. And, most importantly, life didn’t need an escape hatch because it had an off switch.
Today things are so different – not better or worse, just different. It is a different time with different worries. It’s difficult to escape the headlines. We are bombarded with stories that are tragic and awful by an industry that is built on continually talking about an event, even when there is no new news to report about it. Our phones alert us to stories, often when we don’t want to hear any more about them.
So, when my sister texted me a few weeks ago for some advice for my nephew’s anxiety, I had to think. Thirty-plus years ago, there where more explicit boundaries between the adult and childhood spheres. Most of the horrific headlines we as children heard of pertained to the adult world and not to our own.
Until a year ago, I didn’t realize how being constantly plugged-in had affected me: one tragedy after another; one political election cycle after another. Plus, the turmoil those things caused amongst my friends on social media added another layer of anxiety to my life.
It led me to a place of fear and doubt, and that fear slowly drained all empathy from me. I started not caring about any of it because that was the only way to avoid it.
I started ignoring my problems and drowning them in whatever was around that could take away the pain – to make me forget. I walked through life waiting for the next shoe to drop, and because of that treated myself and everyone around me poorly.
I unplugged myself. Hit the reset button and waited for my life to slowly reboot. I’ve spent the last year starting back up. Adding back certain things into my personal media mix and keeping others at arm’s distance.
And while I find it is good to be able to be informed (i.e., not living under a rock), sometimes I choose to not stay informed. Staying out of the loop is a gift.
Because I choose to do this, the world is the same, yet it feels so dramatically different. So much brighter and more beautiful. I’ve had some of the biggest personal hurdles of my life this year, yet I’ve found that I have enough energy to deal with those struggles because I choose to not deal with ALL the world’s problems. Through my daily mindfulness practices, I’ve found a better way to cope and manage the difficulties that life presents me.
Before you start to think I’m suggesting you bury your head in the sand and ignore what is happening in the world, I need to explain something I have learned:
Just like one of those four stations we got growing up, our emotions are a broadcast signal to the universe. This signal reverberates through others, creating a reaction in them. Then, in a chain reaction, that person affects the next person, and the next person, and so on. With every moment we focus on fear, we move one bit closer to that fear. Our worries become a magnet, and we inspire and attract other people, places, and things that reinforce them.
And because absolutely everything in life is cyclical, the weight of those fears will pull us down into a downward spiral. Over time, our fearful perceptions become our scary reality because we construct a world around us based on them.
This doesn’t have to be the case. We can change our emotional broadcast. We can create a new station based on our core belief that this world is a good place. We can send out a signal of unconditional love and understanding. Then, attract the same in kind.
I know this is possible because I have done it. One year since rebooting my life, the world is the same, yet my reality is entirely different. I also know that if enough people change their signal from fear to love, then that signal of love will multiply – growing exponentially. Our collective reality will be one based in collective acceptance and understanding, not fear.
When I am feeling lost or scared, I turn off the external broadcast around me and tune into my own channel. I passed along the following mantra to my nephew because it has been a useful tool in changing my own emotional broadcast. I hope you find value in it too.
Our World Is A Good Place
Breathe in through your nose, and on the up breath (after inhaling, yet before exhaling), say each line of the mantra below as intentionally as you can. Then, breathe out through your mouth, pushing out any doubt or fear with that breath, returning it to the universe.
At first, concentrate on what these phrases mean and how your personal experience has proven them to be true. Only focus on their truth, and anytime your mind wanders or tries to convince you they aren’t 100% true, focus back on the words. Your brain’s processor is just trying to protect you from harm – it is fueled by fear. And in its fearful state, it forgets how a vast majority of the time, the words below are more real than what it wants to say to us. Just like a pet that gets distracted or worried, your mind needs to be trained to focus. In those moments, it needs reassurance from you.
Focus back on the task of repeating the words below and believing them. As you believe them more and more, start feeling them emotionally. Not just thinking or believing – feeling. That feeling is the broadcast signal you are transmitting to the universe. Keep going until that feeling is pure. Keeping going until it is love for the world you are broadcasting.
This won’t be simple at first. Over time you will notice it gets more comfortable, and your mind gets quieter and quieter. It just takes consistent practice. I start and end my day with this mantra. I like to say it as soon as I open my eyes in the morning and again right before I go to sleep at night.
Say at least 5 times:
- Breathe In. “Our world is a good place.” Breathe Out.
- Breathe In. “Good people live here.” Breathe Out.
- Breathe In. “Good things happen here.”* Breathe Out.
Repeat
For those of you that find guided meditations and mantras more comfortable, I put together a simple video that may help you focus and quiet your distracting thoughts.