Hello dear friends! How are you? I hope all is OK. As we all know, January 2020 marks a difficult month to process for a lot of people around the world. I know there’s so many things around us that makes us feel vulnerable and out of control. However, don’t you worry, the world is bright and we can heal… even around all the “chaos”.
After a heavy month of a tempestuous emotions in my hometown, I’m back in colorful Colorado, my temporary home. Things here are a bit different from my native home. I feel more at peace, more calm, and time here is a bit slow- which gave me time to reflect on healing and question myself…
“How can we heal in an era of overwhelming information?” Here are my 3 takes:
1- Choose what to see and how long – watch, read, or listen to the news, and you’re likely to come away believing that the world is rapidly descending into disaster and chaos, even though many aspects of life have improved dramatically over the last few decades. Exposure to consistent, sensationalized pessimism and negativity has become the norm for those keeping up with the news.
How to ease that? To start reducing the detrimental effects of negativity, limit your consumption of negativity at the source. It’s one thing to be informed, but quite another to expose yourself to sensationalized negativity for hours a day.
One great habit I practice: instead of starting your day off reading what the world has to say, make another approach to your routine. Either try meditation, finding inspiration thu’ quotes (hello Pinterest!), write your love ones, or releasing energy via exercise. When you feed yourself first, you will be prepared to read about the world drama. You will feel selective to what you want to feed your brain. To add, you can limit yourself to the amount of time you spend in the “deep loop hole”. Why don’t you put 30 min-1 hr a day as a goal? You will be more productive and happier each day, trust me!
Fact: There might be a sweet spot when it comes to the amount of time you spend on social media. Keeping your use down to just 30 minutes a day can lead to better mental health outcomes, according to research being published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
2- Know your facts – what are the facts on which your opinions are built? For example, after seeing multiple horrific articles on recent crime, you may think your hometown has become a more dangerous place to live, but have you actually examined any real data to support this idea?
How to ease the stress of “news”? : Research, do your homework and get the right facts before condemning your life and those around you to a living hell. Please if you do so: stop re-sharing articles you haven’t fast checked 1st. Thank you!
3- The bounce effect – a while ago I read about the bounce principle and I found it wonderful! Will you try this simple experiment for 1 day? Each time your brain switches to a negative thought after a conflict or some dissonance, bounce it into a positive reaction and a positive thought instead. Do that all day long and even take notes about what you had to bounce for the day. I’m confident that, by the end of the day, you will start seeing life a bit differently.
Interesting fact: Positive thoughts attract positive things and negative thoughts attract negative things. Once negative thoughts get replaced by positive thoughts, positive things and positive situations get attracted towards the origin of the thought. The more you think positively, the more you will bring about positivity to you. Life isn’t happening to you. Life is responding to you.
In conclusion…
I’m not saying to stay oblivious to our surroundings. Not at all. However, instead of being another machine of the demands of our society choose to BEF : BE, ENJOY and FEED your life 1st.
Be more: present, informative, and wise with your precious time.
Enjoy: time with love ones, hobbies, food, traveling, dancing and nature.
Feed your: soul, curiosity, and yourself first.
I hope my takes will help ease the chaos that it’s in our minds and surroundings and we can move forward, more resilient and combative to the other months of 2020.
Bonus- helping others in anyway you can have higher healing effects!
xoxo,
Cristina
Ps. I invented BEF 🙂 not World War I related!
Pssst what to read next (outside my blog):
- Here Are A Bunch Of Charts That Prove The World Is Better Than Ever
- “Rated false”: Here’s the most interesting new research on fake news and fact-checking
- NO MORE FOMO: LIMITING SOCIAL MEDIA DECREASES LONELINESS AND DEPRESSION
