For our final blog in this series offering tools to support you when you feel anxious, uncertain or dread, we’re focusing on community.
Firstly, what does community mean to you?
Take a moment and really think about it. What might in include:
Family
Friends
Church/temple
Walking Group
Whatever community means to you, here are 4 ways to deepen those connections.
1. Social Support
Research reminds us that good health, happiness, and longevity are all significantly improved when we have deep interpersonal relationships.
How are you nurturing those?
Is there someone in your life you would like to connect to even more?
2. Service
Being of service to others in some capacity, also yields incredible results when it comes to our mental well being. Again, research supports this.
People are less depressed, feel more engaged and connected, and can even attain a bliss-like state from helping or caring for others.
Think about someone or, perhaps an organization, where you could share of your time and talents.
What might that look like?
What do you enjoy doing?
3. Action
You know the saying: “If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem.”
Typically, anxiety is caused by fear of something negative happening in the future.
Can you identify what that is?
Perhaps it’s personal, political, environmental, existential, or all of the above!
Whatever it is, how can you be part of lessening the pain or making it better?
What action can you take?
Because here’s the secret: action is the antidote to fear.
Here are some ideas: pray, protest, donate, write a letter to an editor, boycott… and no doubt, you have twenty more. Pick one.
4. Social Justice
The world we inhabit is a reflection of what we think and believe.
As you know, I have a strong connection to the goddess Tara, who is considered a bodhisattva, a being who has returned in form to liberate everyone from suffering.
Social justice is an outpouring of this. It is truly love in action. If we are all one, then anyone who is suffering is me, or you.
Again, what can you do to support social justice?
Sometimes the plight of the world can feel overwhelming. One way I get unstuck is to remind myself of something an oyster farmer said to me years ago. “I take care of my part of the ocean.”
Look around your community. What could you participate in to help it feel more just and equitable?
This concludes our 4-part series on managing uncertainty, anxiety and dread.
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Image courtesy of Shane Rounce on Unsplash