Shine Your Light
When times are confusing and uncertain—when innocent people are caught in the crossfire of global decisions—our natural instinct is to pull back. We contract our spending, our trust, and our generosity. We basically go on a societal crash diet, shrinking our spirit in the name of self-preservation. Even our attempts at rebellion are often just a spiritual shrug, defining us by what we refuse to do.
But let’s be honest: trying to solve global chaos by tightening our emotional purse strings is about as effective as trying to quench one’s thirst with a glass of salt water. Contraction is not the answer.
This is the moment for expansion.
The Contagious Act of Well-Being
It is absolutely right to stay informed and act where you can (supporting local food banks is always a five-star idea), but we must refuse to shrink creatively, emotionally, or spiritually.
This is the moment to:
Reach Out: Build your community. Think of your network not just as friends, but as your highly-effective, personalized Despair-Proofing Shield.
Expand Your Capacity: See this time as a launchpad, not a landing strip. If you’re going to be busy, make sure you're busy building and scaling things that are fair, equitable, and generally awesome.
The science is clear: well-being is ridiculously contagious. If you live near someone happy, your own chance of happiness rises by nearly 60%, even if you never swap recipes. When you thrive, your thriving throws off light like the strip in Vegas..
True well-being doesn't mean ignoring suffering—it means choosing, again and again, to stay vital and open-hearted in the middle of it. When you are well, you are grounded. You are harder to manipulate. You are steady enough to lift others up. You become the stable center of gravity in a room full of people who think the floor is lava.
The Turning of the Wheel
The work before us is revolutionary. The word "revolution" literally means the turning of a wheel. A true revolution is a cosmic return to the core truth of who we are: creators, lovers, and sustainers of life.
Well-being isn’t the trophy at the end of the struggle; it’s the highly effective battle plan.
We prevail by holding faith that the world will heal—while doing the disciplined work to make it so. Every act of expansion, kindness, and creation is a small but potent revolution.
In Practice: Shine Your Light
If this week feels heavy, here are five ways to stop shrinking and start shining your light:
Confront the Facts (Then Turn Off your Phone): Stay informed, but do not let the news become a permanent resident in your nervous system. Awareness is strength; obsession is just mental exhaustion.
Be Ridiculously Generous: Donate to a food bank, buy a coffee for a stranger, or drop off cookies to a neighbor. Every act of giving proves that the flow of abundance is alive and well.
Stay in Community: Reach out to friends, even briefly. Share ideas, encouragement, and most importantly, laughter. Laughter is the cheapest form of crisis management.
Keep Creating: Write, paint, teach, build—whatever your unique form of contribution may be. Creation is expansion—it’s how you keep the wheel of revolution turning.
Be a Self-Care Overachiever: Rest. Eat. Move. Pray. Breathe. Choose to stay nourished—body, mind, and spirit. Well-being is how you anchor yourself while the world performs an aggressive spin cycle around you.
Go out there and shine your light this week. Do it with determination, with faith that you will prevail, and the discipline to build the world as it can be.