The Tsèz

It seems the world is getting worse, but that doesn’t mean your inner world has to be too.

“How am I supposed to feel happy when the world is so f* up?” A friend said to me last week. I won’t lie, I had the same question in my mind a few months ago, but not everything is completely good or completely bad, and maybe that is our cornerstone for a brighter vision of our future.

I won’t enlist the calamities that are cornering the world these days, I believe we have an enough taste of them on the newspapers, news shows and coffee breaks at work or school, but what I’d like to enlist are the possible solutions to save our mental health in the negativity breakthrough that is happening in the world.

First of all, I shall confess that I’m not a psychology expert nor a doctor nor anything related, I’m just sharing what worked for me, and in case you feel you can’t deal with everything, ask for help. It is always the best choice.

The Flight Crew Principle

If you have taken a flight, there’s a chance that you might have experienced the phenomenon of turbulence, that moment in which the plane enters an air flow and everything shakes and for a moment you think the plane will fall.

Something I realized during a turbulence moment on a flight is the calmness (at least apparent) that the flight crew has. On that flight, the plane was shaking somewhat strongly, yet the flight crew was sitting calmly, not a single glimpse of nervousness on their faces.

That’s what I’d like to call: the Flight Crew Principle.

We (the 7.87 billion humans living on this planet) are on the same flight, regardless how much we want to leave the Earth and escape to Mars, Pluton or the Moon. We are all attached to this planet.

For better or worse, the turbulence that is striking us, is striking us all, doesn’t matter how far away from the origin you live, how old you are or how your mental state is.

I read somewhere (I can’t remember where, otherwise here it would be the link) that everything that happens is neutral, the way we see it, or more specifically, the way we react to it will define how disastrous, bad, meh, good or excellent it is.

So, apply the Flight Crew Principle: when facing turbulence, you have two ways to approach it: the first one is to scream, get anxious and force your seatbelt, or the other one is to sit gracefully and wait for the turbulence to pass. It always pass.

Focus on the positive, work on the negative (and learn from the process)

On a local scale, the negativity of the world can manifest in stress, anxiety, uncertainty and lots of emotions that can even leak into our health. That’s why embracing optimism is important.

The advice that is becoming almost a cliché is: focus on the positive. Of course, saying it is easier than doing it, but believe me, if you want, you will.

To explain this, I’d like to share a fragment from one of Peggy Lee’s songs, Mañana:

The window she is broken and the rain is comin’ in
If someone doesn’t fix it I’ll be soaking to my skin
But if we wait a day or two the rain may go away
And we don’t need a window on such a sunny day!

The protagonist of the song has a huge problem: it is raining and her window is broken. It is a huge problem because it is actually happening, it isn’t an idea, it isn’t a prediction, it is happening. Yet, she still sings and says that in a day or two it will all go away.

What do I want to highlight about this? Focus on the positive and work on the negative.

It is raining. More specifically, she’ll be soaking to her skin!, but instead of worrying, she is focusing on the positive: in a day or two it will be a sunny day.

I’m not saying you have to ignore the problem, but instead, work on it, and if you can’t (as the protagonist of the song), focus on the positive.

Also, if it isn’t happening, don’t worry, prevent.

We tend to create lots of scenarios, predictions, plans, etcetera. But, from a thousand predictions, just one becomes true. Focus on the positive one.

Finally, learn from the process. Acknowledge your emotions and your thoughts. Don’t fight them. By doing so, you can analyse what emotions are more frequent and to which side your mental scenarios incline (are they closer to a good result or to a bad one?).

Focusing on the positive won’t mean it will happen just because, but it will give you a brighter vision and a better state of mind, which leads to a better performance.

Meditate and work on your mindfulness

I used to be one of those people that said: “How is meditating supposed to work? I’m just sitting in silence, so what?!”, but luckily, I was wrong.

A few weeks ago, I decided to start a meditation challenge. 21 days. I had nothing to lose and a new mindset to win. What could go wrong?

So far I can only say that meditating has really helped me. (Now that I think of it, I might write an article about it, stay tuned!) The first days, I sat there and felt nothing, but now that I’m reaching the end of the challenge, I can say that I’ve been feeling more happy and relieved. Relieved from what? I don’t know, I believe that’s the magic of mindfulness.

If you think that meditation isn’t for you, there are lots of different activities you can still do, for example, journaling.

Writing down what is stressing you really helps to see the problem from an external perspective. Most of the time, we believe our problems are larger than life, but once we see them reduced to a word or two, the perspective really does change.

But journaling doesn’t limit to just the negative, you can also write the positive… who wouldn’t like to remember the best day of their lives?

Also, by writing the positive and the negative, we can work on my previous point, focus on the positive things. Nothing is as bad as it seems and there’s only one problem, in the whole world, in the duration of history and in the vastness of the universe that has no solution. I won’t tell you which one it is. Remember, focus on the positive!

From the infinity of problems, just one doesn’t have a solution, and I assure you, there’s a 99.9% probability that it isn’t the one you’re thinking about.

Remember, with a positive mindset, almost anything is possible. It doesn’t matter what the world is saying. What if rain comes? We got our umbrellas. What if it is cold? We take our jackets. What if the world seems to be doomed? We take out the positive and build a brighter future.

If something’s wrong, it can only mean two things: the first one, obviously, that it is wrong, but the second one, and my favourite, means that there’s a chance to improve.

A smile might not change the world, but surely it can change a person’s life.

Au revoir!