Every morning when we wake up, we make a choice.
Most of us probably don’t even realize we’re making it.
What am I going to focus on today?
There has never been a time in human history when we have had so much access to everything that is going wrong everywhere.
War.
Violence.
Political turmoil.
Natural disasters.
Economic fears.
Crime.
Disease.
Predictions of what terrible thing might happen next.
We can wake up in a perfectly peaceful bedroom, pick up a little device beside the bed, and within five minutes expose ourselves to suffering and fear from every corner of the planet.
And then we wonder why we’re stressed.
Our World Used to Be Much Smaller
Not so long ago, a person’s world was largely the community around them.
People knew what was happening in their family.
Their village.
Their town.
They might receive a letter from someone far away.
Travelers might arrive with news.
People talked to one another.
Of course terrible things happened then, too.
But the average person wasn’t expected to emotionally process the troubles of millions of strangers, thousands of miles away, several times before breakfast.
Today, we are.
Or at least we’ve somehow come to believe we are.
Our nervous systems are wonderfully designed to help us respond to danger.
But I don’t believe they were designed to carry the worries of the entire planet all day long.
Yet that is what many of us ask them to do.
Is That Really Your World?
This is the question I began asking myself.
I would hear about something terrible happening somewhere and feel the fear, anger, sadness or worry entering my own inner world.
But then I could look around me.
What was actually happening here?
Maybe sunlight was coming through the window.
Maybe the birds were singing.
Maybe someone was laughing.
Maybe I had food.
Maybe I had a safe place to sleep.
Maybe somebody loved me.
Maybe something beautiful was growing outside.
Both realities existed.
The terrible event was real.
But so was everything beautiful around me.
Why was I allowing one small—and usually distant—portion of reality to define the whole world?
There is joy here, too.
There is kindness.
There is beauty.
There is generosity.
There are opportunities.
There are people falling in love.
Babies being born.
Neighbors helping neighbors.
People healing.
People creating.
People laughing until their stomachs hurt.
Miracles, large and small.
That’s part of the world, too.
I Stopped Watching the News
When I returned from France in 2021, I made a decision.
I stopped watching the news.
I stopped reading it, too.
That was my choice.
I’m not suggesting it has to be yours.
But it has been enormously good for me.
I’ve had people tell me:
“But I have to know what’s going on!”
And sometimes I ask:
“Why?”
Interestingly, people don’t always have an answer.
They’ve simply accepted the idea that responsible adults are supposed to remain informed about what is happening everywhere, all the time.
I don’t accept that responsibility for myself anymore.
If something genuinely important affects my life and I need to know about it, somehow I hear about it.
Meanwhile, I get to decide what receives my attention.
And since I made that decision, I have been much happier.
Where Are You Right Now?
I used to worry about not having enough money.
My mind could travel very quickly into the future.
What if I don’t have enough?
What if something happens?
What if I can’t take care of myself?
Then I learned to bring myself back to now.
I’d ask:
Right this minute, do I have what I need?
Yes.
Can I take care of myself right now?
Yes.
Am I safe right now?
Yes.
And I would breathe.
Nothing about my bank account had magically changed.
What changed was where I was living.
I had stopped living inside an imagined frightening future and returned to the moment I was actually in.
And in that moment, all was well.
You Don’t Have to Deny Reality
This isn’t about pretending painful things don’t happen.
Of course they do.
We lose people we love.
We get sick.
We experience disappointment.
Sometimes we’re frightened.
Sometimes our hearts break.
Sometimes something is happening in our own lives that genuinely requires our attention.
If your heart is hurting today, I’m not suggesting you paste a smile over it and go admire a flower.
Hold your hurting heart.
Love it.
Give yourself what you need.
That is coming home to yourself, too.
There is an enormous difference between experiencing the pain that actually belongs to this moment and continually importing additional fear into our lives from everywhere else.
Savannah Is Hot!
Right now, it is hot where I live in Savannah.
Very hot. 😂
People talk about it constantly.
“It’s SO hot!”
And sometimes I find myself saying:
“Don’t focus on being hot!”
Look around.
Look at those magnificent trees.
Look at the Spanish moss moving in the breeze.
Look at the beauty of this place.
Look at the people you’re meeting.
Look at how fortunate you are to be standing here experiencing it.
Yes, it’s hot.
That’s true.
But it isn’t the only thing that’s true.
And that’s the point.
We get to decide which part of reality receives most of our attention.
What We Focus On Expands
I believe that what we focus on expands.
I’ve seen that principle operating in my own life again and again.
When I continually focus on what frightens me, fear occupies more of my inner world.
When I focus on what I love, I notice more to love.
When I look for kindness, I see kindness everywhere.
When I look for beauty, suddenly the world seems extraordinarily beautiful.
And when I live from that place, I bring something different into the world myself.
There’s a wonderful idea commonly expressed as:
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Whether we want peace, love, kindness or generosity, why wait for the rest of the world to provide it first?
Do you want peace?
Begin creating peace inside yourself.
Do you want more love in the world?
Love.
Do you want more kindness?
Be kind.
Do you want more generosity?
Give when you have something in your reserve to give.
Do you want more joy?
Allow yourself to experience joy.
Then bring it with you wherever you go.
Childish?
Maybe someone reading this is thinking:
That’s terribly naive.
You can’t change the world by looking at trees and being nice to people.
I disagree.
I don’t think it’s childish at all.
I think perhaps we’ve forgotten how much influence each of us has over the little piece of the world we touch every day.
Imagine what happens when one peaceful person walks into a room.
One kind person enters a difficult conversation.
One loving person encounters someone who desperately needs to be seen.
One generous person helps someone without expecting anything in return.
Now imagine millions of us doing it.
We don’t have to fix the entire planet before we’re allowed to live beautifully within it.
We can begin with the world immediately around us.
And perhaps that is how the larger world changes anyway.
Choose Your World Today
So tomorrow morning, before the world tells you what you should be frightened or angry about, ask yourself:
What do I choose to focus on today?
Look around.
What is beautiful?
What is working?
Who do you love?
What do you have?
What can you give?
What can you create?
Where can you bring a little peace?
Come home to yourself.
Come back to your heart.
And from there, choose what kind of world you want to participate in creating.
Today, I choose joy.
I choose love.
I choose kindness.
I choose beauty.
I choose peace.
And then I will do my best to bring those things into every little corner of the world I touch.
Focus on what you want to see in the world.
Then go out and help create more of it. ❤️