In Maddening Times...

During maddening times, let the mad go madder so you can stay sane.

It seems contradictory, but it’s true. Kind of like giving someone enough rope to hang themselves. If we continually try to control, engage with, or manage the madness, we will only grow more and more desensitized to it, until we end up joining in. This is why cults and propaganda work. They slowly chip away at sanity until what was once thought of as insane becomes “normal.”

Of course, this is all theoretical when we talk about it like this and has little to do with our daily lives and how we can navigate maddening times, with things like rampant wildfires, excessive greed, and runaway technology going on. So, let’s make it tangible…

When everything around you feels unstable or like the world is burning, the best thing you can do is double-down on your own stability.

This can look like:

• Keeping up with friends and/or family

• Eating food that nourishes you and also gives you enjoyment

• Moving your body in whatever way works for you and feels good

• Engaging in your favorite hobbies or activities

• Resting

• Getting involved in things you care about

One of the most common questions I’ve been asked by clients in recent years is how they can be involved in the world without getting depressed or anxious. The answer is always the same, even when the circumstances are different:

You have to choose what matters most to you, and focus on that.

In other words, you can’t get involved in everything; you have to choose one thing and one thing only. Of course, some people can do more than one thing (or, seemingly everything), but most people can’t. It’s not healthy, nor is it sustainable. If you don’t want to collapse under the weight of the world, you have to decide not to move under it. Yes, it really is that simple.

By focusing on one thing you feel incredibly passionate about (as well as reinforcing the things that bring you stability in life) you can actually move through maddening times with more clarity. This, in turn, will help you be a beacon to others as you become an example of how to not go mad when everything around you feels out of control.

Now, in order to focus, you also have to disengage. Disengaging from the madness is the other thing that is required. Many people feel that disengagement is similar to ignorance. It’s not. Disengaging means being informed, but not letting the information affect you emotionally. In other words, you can read about something, collect it as data and information, and choose to not get upset about it by not focusing or dwelling on it. Instead, you see it as building knowledge that can help you make better decisions in the future.

Does it mean you live in ignorance? No. Does it mean you don’t care about elephants, because you’re focused on polar bears or microplastics? No. Does it mean you’re not doing enough when you only focus on one thing? No. It means you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing to shift us out of the maddening times and into the era of hope and stability by contributing to the collective.

In truth, these times were written in the stars (though they are lasting a bit longer than originally predicted). What’s true about this era is that it’s meant to break things down so that they can be rebuilt… and it’s always better to create a new foundation than to build on an old, dysfunctional one. So, things really need to fall apart. How everything will be rebuilt is up to the collective, which means it’s even more important for you to double-down on the things that keep you sane and make you happy. Though you may not feel significant, trust me when I say that each soul on the planet right now carries an equal weight. So, if more and more souls are aligned with balance and stability, it will eventually shift everything in that direction.

One of the things I do regularly in my practice is zoom out to a 100,000-foot view of the planet so that I can see the energy of the collective. And it’s true that the scales are a bit wobbly right now, which is what so many people are feeling. It’s also true that spontaneously going to have an ice cream with your children on a random Tuesday is helping to stabilize the scales, just as donating to or volunteering for your favorite cause does. In other words: the little daily actions you take matter. Often more than the big sweeping ones, because they’re cumulative.

So, when the times are maddening, if you don’t want to go mad with them, you have to get deliberate about your own life and make choices that are more aligned with high-frequency energies, like: hope, love, joy, peace, and possibility. And if that includes ice cream outings, saving baby elephants, or spontaneous kitchen dancing… I’m here for it!

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