The world might currently feel saturated by threat. It doesn’t help that weaponized social media and a 24-hour spin-and-spew news cycle relentlessly triggers our mental, physical, and emotional stress responses. This bombardment of adrenaline can leave us locked into confusion, doubt, and fear, when what we need most is to trust ourselves and act with clarity, wisdom, and decisiveness.
So how exactly might something as toothless as mindfulness help when scary or unjust things are everywhere? Terror can lead to tunnel vision, causing us to act in ways we might later regret—whether we’re responding to the latest barrage of news, or encountering the personal stressors that challenge us in everyday life. Mindfulness can help us both focus and widen our attention, which can be extremely helpful when life brings the unexpected.
Trust Your Intuition
For instance, a friend was singing with a band at a big children’s party in a Legion hall. At the back of the hall, he saw someone he didn’t know come staggering into the room. Like a scene from a horror movie, the stranger picked up the large, pointy knife laid out to cut the birthday cake, hid it from view, and menacingly approached the stage. Most of the band stepped back, but without thinking, my friend found himself stepping forward to meet the guy, with no idea what to do.
As the point of the knife was getting closer to my friend’s throat, an utterly bizarre thing happened: He winked at the guy and flashed him a huge smile, as if to say, “We’re buddies here, aren’t we? I know you’re just fooling around.”
Something about this act of unexpected friendliness and openness in the face of extreme aggression stopped the knife-wielder in his tracks. This was not supposed to happen. Where’s the fear? Don’t you see this big pointy knife I’m waving at you? The wink and smile were, in fact, just weird enough to slow the situation down so that security could quietly escort him out of the room. What could have been a traumatic, gory mess for a room full of children and their parents somehow, unimaginably, just evaporated.
This true story isn’t about being a fool in the face of danger. It’s about being open to adaptive options that might only grow out in left field. It’s about understanding the great value of a curious and flexible mind. A willingness to take a breath, take a look, and then act.
When you feel anxious and unsafe, your body releases hormones that can rocket you toward automatic responses that might include thinking your best choice is going on the attack. Mindfulness training gives you an edge to help you see that there could be other innovative and more skillful options. As you regularly practice simple techniques that connect you to the present, you will calm your nervous system, enabling you to quickly regulate your emotions and employ more of your brilliant mind to solve problems at hand.
Beyond the superpower of self-regulation (which can be useful when you’re bursting to scream at your boss, kid, spouse, or neighbor), choosing to engage with awareness will give you access to strategies that help increase your self-trust, sharpen your cognitive flexibility, and enliven your intuition.
Here’s Your Next Step
How do you cultivate intuition and self-trust? A good starting point might be to simply notice what is going on in you and around you more often. Take in the smells, visual cues, sounds, textures, and tastes that give you so much information about the world. You can go for a walk without your headphones and savor the sights, sounds, flavors, and feels. This sense-walk can help you stabilize by anchoring you to the here and now, versus hanging out in your chattering brain that might be pulling you back into a painful past you cannot change or drowning you in the anxiety of an uncertain future.
There will forever be too many things that you cannot plan for or control. But you can tap into and learn to trust the wisdom that empowers you to step forward even when the rest of the band steps back. Stepping forward can be incredibly risky. Stepping back is a very wise move at times. There’s no rule. It’s about tuning in to the moment. Learning to trust your intuition can help you skillfully manage whatever life sends your way. Whether you step forward or turn away, what kind of world view are you saying yes to?
You don’t have to shoot—you can wink. As you trust what emerges, the most astonishing possibilities can appear when you least expect them.
