Train and work with difficulty when life is not intense, to build strength, resilience, and compassion, enabling you to be of benefit during future global challenges.
Engage in a meditation practice to increase self-awareness, reflect on your own habitual patterns (such as fear or aggression), and understand your tendencies.
When acknowledging your habitual patterns, cultivate a kind attitude towards them instead of making them an enemy or judging yourself negatively, without acting them out or repressing them.
Practice meditation with open acceptance of whatever arises, avoiding judgment or categorizing experiences as good or bad, to foster a non-reactive mindset.
Work to become comfortable and familiar with the unpleasantness or fear-producing quality of seeing yourself clearly, rather than running away from these feelings, to build resilience and confidence.
Cultivate unconditional friendliness and acceptance towards yourself, as this directly enables you to extend unconditional regard and openness to other people.
Integrate loving kindness (metta) or Tonglen practices into your meditation to cultivate warmth towards your inner experiences, allowing you to approach difficult emotions with humor and less aversion.
When experiencing hardship, consciously choose not to add rage or bitterness to the situation, as these emotions will only consume you and prolong your own suffering.
When faced with actions you disagree with, condemn the harmful act itself, but refrain from condemning the person, remembering that individuals are capable of change and possess inherent goodness.
When fear arises, acknowledge it with kindness and warmth, rather than aversion, to create a nurturing space for understanding and processing the emotion.
Pay attention to your internal narratives and storylines, recognizing how they can escalate and exaggerate your fear, and understand that feeding these thoughts causes more pain.
During meditation, practice letting go of fear-inducing thoughts and redirect your attention to the physical sensations of fear in your body, rather than getting caught in mental rumination.
When feeling fear physically, breathe deeply into the contracted areas of your body, using the in-breath to open and expand with warmth, and the out-breath to relax and release.
Engage directly with the immediate physical and emotional sensations of your experience, without the interference of analytical thoughts, to find a more settled and genuine understanding.
Cultivate inner calmness and settledness through practices that foster warmth and compassion, as this state can open the door to new insights and fresh perspectives on challenging situations.
Maintain an open heart to the suffering and losses experienced by others, allowing the strong and vivid feeling of interconnectedness to arise.
Strive to cultivate inner calmness, especially in crisis situations, as the presence of one calm individual can positively influence and calm those around them.