The world is seriously overwhelming.
▶︎ We have a food industry that produces more chemicals than nutrients.
▶︎ We have a clothing industry that puts more products in landfills than on our backs.
▶︎ We have a health service crippled by demand, much of which has been created by the chemicals from the food industry and a total misunderstanding of the need to treat the mind, body, and soul, therefore only focusing on the body and as a result, creating a merry go round of patients.
▶︎ We have a mental health epidemic, surging suicide rates, and inadequate support driven by the creation of an environment at odds with our basic needs – to feel safe, to feel seen, to belong as our authentic selves, and to have some agency in the way we live our lives.
▶︎ We have a wellness industry creating mass confusion with conflicting advice and must-have products, much of which is aimed at creating as much vulnerability as possible in order to make a sale.
▶︎ We have much of the world at war, resulting in huge numbers of refugees and at the same time an increasing ‘anti-immigration’ sentiment, fuelled by a capitalist system that encourages all to focus on individual needs ahead of the collective needs of humanity.
▶︎ And, it seems, democracy has been hijacked by propaganda.
So, there really is no wonder we might shut down, panic, feel anxious, escape into meaningless distractions and addictions, feel angry, and generally find life really bloody hard.
This means we are not mad or broken, it means that we are human, having perfectly reasonable responses, to perfectly unreasonable circumstances.
And it’s important to remember that because otherwise, we risk accepting and normalising what is not ok, not normal, and at times, damn right evil.
That’s not to say we have to spend our days drowning in despair, or fighting to exhaustion, it’s simply to say:
- Read, read, and then read some more – educating ourselves on facts, understanding others’ perspectives, and expanding our empathy, are really our superpowers for finding solutions to the seemingly impossible.
- Give yourself permission to cry, rage, and laugh – learning to live with and process all of our emotions, enables us to face the bad stuff, increases our resilience, makes space in our hearts, and will enable us to step into the breach of humanity we see every day.
- Do the small things in the face of the large challenges – the ripple effects of small steps and the misunderstood power of our collective consciousness is by far our most under-estimated resource. If each of us simply smiled at one stranger today, that exchange of love, of connection, will have ripples beyond our imagination, it reminds us of how we feel when we connect as humans that belong to something bigger than ourselves and that makes us feel safer, more love and ultimately creates a sh*t load of motivation and courage so we can tackle the big stuff, together.
The world may be a little f*cked right now, but we are not.
With love
Nik x
