9 Ways to Stay Balanced in a Dumpster Fire

It is challenging to manage one’s energy as this new year plugs along. We are bombarded daily by news which has the potential to massively change how we move through the world. Daily we hear about another community or population that is under attack whether by bullets or legislation. It is challenging for those with basic empathy and even more so for those of us who are tender-hearted to navigate the mass input of negativity that is the daily news. 

And for those of us in affected populations or demographics, it feels like we are under personal attack with so much of our country against us, threatening us, or pretending we don’t exist. We wake up, walk through the day, and go to bed with a level of fear and dread. There is so much uncertainty around what is to come. So how can we feel balanced, whole or resilient during these times? 

Being balanced is a way to recognize the hardships of the world and still move forward. Keeping your feet underneath you as you process the rapidly shifting landscape. Finding ways to let the copious amount of bad news– which feels out of our control, to not linger within you. Allowing you to experience that energy while not letting it take the driver’s seat of your emotional and mental state. 

We can recognize hard news, process it, but know at the end of the day we will not let it win. We will not let it overtake us or overwhelm us. We can park it in the queue for the change we want to see and continue on with the work we are meant to do in the world. 

Here are a handful of options for you to try when it comes to maintaining your balance and your peace. 

1: Switch to Weekly or BiMonthly News Consumption

Why does the news need to be consumed daily? It doesn’t. Think about all the news that you consumed daily in real time last week. How much of it required your immediate action? How much of it could have used your immediate action to change course. Bad news today will still be bad news next week. There is no benefit in rushing towards it. If anything, delayed news can have less of a sting. Receiving it after a week has passed could minimize the sting or the worry that comes from hearing the news as it happens. I have often taken a multi-year long hiatus from the news and never felt too out of the loop. I was able to have more resiliency each day and each week because I didn’t have to carry the burden of the daily news. Tell your family and friends that you are taking a break so they can limit news conversation to only what would directly impact you. 

For those of you whose work requires some level of current events you can try out just consuming the highlights. As a nonprofit leader, I realize that my news hiatus wasn’t allowing me to know about things that would directly affect the communities we served. I was always behind and wasn’t able to be there for them as much as I wanted to. I would hop on to NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and just listen to the intro. The intro will just give me the news headlines. I was to know what was impacting the world without taking a deep dive. You can also just read the headlines on the news sites you trust without reading the entire article. It is a way of getting a taste without being fully immersed in the troubling news of the day. 

2: Focus on Stories of Hope

If you are part of a marginalized or minority community, there are endless stories of hope and triumph from within your communities. There are stories of people facing much of what you are facing now. Rereading or listening to these stories can inspire hope in you too. These stories from our communities were often from more challenging times and seeing how they rose up or fought back can make it feel possible for you to do the same in your own unique way. 

These stories can be historic, memoirs from people who inspire us, or they can be fictional. Stories of the underdog overcoming can help give us the boost we need to get through the day or the week. Tales of struggle and triumph can sometimes be tough to watch, listen to or read. If you have a tender heart like me, there is no need to be a purest– skip to the good parts. In the same way you skip to the sexy parts of your favorite fairy fantasy novel (or is that just me),  you can skip to the good stuff to find these moments of hope and triumph. As a black person, I find it very hard to watch stories that center around racism or slavery. Instead of just avoiding the movie all together, I like to skip through all the belligerent racism and get to the parts of them finding their strength and overcoming. 

3: Take Stock of Your Auto-Stressors

Do you have things that always get you frustrated, upset, or take you away from where you want to be emotionally or mentally. Those are your auto-stressors. They are often recurring and easy to take stock of. This could be not only news but how it is talked about. This could be the way people interact with you that rubs you the wrong way or just certain people in general. This could be a recurring disappointment in your daily life that just has you beside yourself. An auto-stressor is not just all these things but the way we automatically respond to them in a stressful way. It requires no thought process or decision making, we just react in a very specific, negative and automatic way. 

Take time and begin to document these stressors. Take note of everything that throws you off emotionally. From there you can decide how you want to approach it. Do you want to find a solution to reduce the occurrence of the stressor in your life? Do you want to find a way to react differently to a stressor that you can’t change or reduce? The goal is to try to reduce the stressor by its presence in your life or by shifting how you react to it, making it less of a stress factor. 

4: Tap into Your Auto Baseline

On the far side of auto-stressors is who we want to be and our goals of how we want to move through the world. These are what I call the auto baseline. Auto baselines are the intentions, weekly goals, or manifestations that we have set for ourselves. For example, my intention for the week could be to be more patient in my communication. Or to go do something nice for myself so I can shorten the time that my auto-stressors affect me. It could be something to focus your energy on that is positive. Like, I want to focus on all the ways that I am trying versus getting down on myself when I come up short. I could want to focus my attention on holding the energy of my dreams and goals instead of focusing on what I don’t have. 

I can think about what my intentions are for the week and create a sticky note where I can see it daily; write it on my mirror; or capture it on my phone’s lock screen. Anywhere where I will be regularly reminded of where I want to be emotionally or mentally. Having an intentional auto baseline allows us to shift our focus from input– a lot of negative input– to something else that will help improve our state of mind. Keeping your auto stressors in mind while crafting your weekly intentions is an excellent way to start. Just be sure that you keep everything in the positive, as in, write down your goals and not the things you want to change. Instead of telling yourself, “stop being mad at your messy housemate” try setting a goal of  “remain patient with your housemate” or “maintain calm and positive energy regardless of the state of the home”. Try also to have fun with this process even when you are not 100% perfect. Compassion will support you more than negative self talk. 

5: Find Resilience Activities

Some days the tightness in your chest from the world can be so overwhelming. It can be extreamly hard to reset, think about your goals or be positive when you are feeling so deeply that it sometimes creates a physical body reaction or pain. Trying out resilience activities may be an option to get you back on your feet. Resilience activities can be anything in the self-care category provided that it actually boosts your spirit. I have always told myself that walking or going for a hike always makes me feel better. But there was this time that I was so overwhelmingly down that I was just balling in the woods on my hike. It wasn’t quite the tonic I was hoping it would be. These resilience activities will be nuanced to how you are feeling in those moments. 

When I feel like A I will do X activity. And when I feel like B I can do Y activity. Resilience activities can be resilience bonding, which we will talk about in a moment, or they can be chants and songs too. Sometimes when I am feeling down, I begin to make up a song to sing to myself. This song is all about who I am and how I want to feel. I will sing it over and over again, modifying the verses and chorus till I get a good rhythm or ear-worm that I can really get into. I sing and sing, calling that energy of peace and joy towards me. I sing till I embody the words that I am singing about. This activity really boosts my spirit and I can maintain it long enough till I feel a shift. It costs me no money, I don’t have to coordinate friends, nor do I have to leave my home or my warm calming bath. Song is an activity that supports my resilience. Some of the songs I remember and can use again; some I pull from others; and some I make up on the spot. You can also use chants and mantras in the same way. Create a mantra when you are setting your weekly intentions, then utilize it when you feel yourself shifting away from your baseline. In the end you will find a resilience activity that you can go back to over and over again. 

6: Seek Out Resilience Bonding

With many hardships we face we are not alone. Connecting with your wider community can confirm that and we can find support in that connectiveness. You are not the only one going through this and you are not the only one who cares. How many times do we isolate when we are feeling down? We are not alone and we don’t always have to process it alone. Be mindful of who you reach out to in times of trouble. Resilience bonding is the opposite of the very comfortable trauma bonding. Being collectively angry, upset or in fear is something that we can easily slip into. However, this doesn’t always bring us back to where we want to be emotionally. Rather it can be a snowball effect where a small bit of bad news can become a torrent of everything that could go wrong leaving us in a worse place than where we started. 

It is important that you find other folks who are interested in being resilient with you. Those who will say, “Hey, the world is on fire but I don’t want to be on fire with it.” Together you can process information with the intention of moving through it, not holding on to it. You can hold space for each other’s pain while being there to lift each other’s spirits. So gather your Resilience Crew and be each other's light at the end of the tunnel. 

7: Create More Brain Space

We find ourselves in a world of input. Our music, endless scrolling, news, influencers, politicians, shows, podcasts, and the list goes on and on. Our emotions swing from side to side without us knowing. How many times have we been going along having a good day and then we experience an advertisement that creates the sense of need or less than. Or we are scrolling on social media and now we feel a little more despair than before. We are having these big emotional shifts outside of our choosing. With so much coming in all at once, it can sometimes be hard to even track why we feel bad at any given moment. 

We need to carve out time where we can not be influenced by everything and anything. Think about all the hours a day that you are experiencing what others want you to experience, why not try choosing what you focus your attention on. You can create a time where you are disconnected from all that noise by leaving your phone in the other room. Driving with your radio off and notifications on silent. Take time to think about what you want to focus your attention on. Time to feel yourself and your own emotions. Time to remind yourself that despite the state of things you might actually be doing okay. 

8: Create an Altar of Joy

Creating more brain space is the time and intention we give to our thoughts and emotions. We can also create a physical space for this too. Think about a sort of altar of joy. This could be a space or corner in a room where you put a lot of your favorite things. What are all the items or nick nacks that bring you joy? Are their sayings that motivate you or posters that make you laugh? Do you have ancestors, living relatives, or inspiring people that you could put pictures of in your joy corner. Or maybe you can create cute doodles of cats befriending cows with long eyelashes to boost your spirit. 

Your altar of joy has the potential to alter the way you feel each and every time you look at it or walk by it. Think of it like a vision board of joy. So start hoarding all the things that you love into a space of joy or put them throughout your home or office as a reminder of how you want to feel throughout your day. 

9: Connect with Your Spirit Guides

Yes, I am casually throwing this in here. Have you ever wanted a team who wants the absolute best for you? A group that can guide you through the ups and downs of your life. This can be your spirit guide team. Many of us have heard of guardian angels. Spirit guides are like that and can be angels, ancestors, animals, or other energies. Don’t worry, not all your ancestors are your spirit guides. The criteria for your guiding team are those non-physical beings who are 1) full of love and light, 2) have your best interest in mind, and 3) love you beyond all reason. Float that criteria to connect with your spirit guides the next time you are feeling down. Do a grounding exercise and then just say “Hey!” to your spirit guides and see what kind of support they would like to provide you that day. 

I find that connecting with my guides on challenging days is the perfect resilience activity for me. It could be just the stabilizing energy I needed or the perfect guidance. Our spirit guides are patience, supportive, and always want to see your highest good come to fruition. Some days when I chat with my guides they can be so poetic ; sometimes they are very down to earth; other days I find them cryptic AF. Regardless, their goal is to move me from stressful hopeless places to a place of joy and peace. 

You Got This

I hope you are able to find your balance and peace through some of these techniques. I know my story ebbs and flows through many of these at different times. Find one or more of these techniques that not only works for you but one that you can keep up with regularly. For example there is no need to make an altar of joy if it becomes meaningless to you in a short time. Think about something that you can put your intention in when you are making that shift towards balance and inner peace. 

I would love to hear about other activities that you all do to stay balanced in today's world. Please share in the comments. To stay connected for more blogs about personal growth and balance. Consider subscribing to the newsletter. 

Be Well.