“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”. -Martin Luther King 

We’re in the middle of a painful historical transition. For all ages past people’s lives had a certain pattern. You lived in the same place. You learned a certain trade or skill. Then you would go into the work force and make a living repeating the same skill in the same place the rest of your career.

But we’re moving into a completely different experience. We’re in a constantly shifting world. World crisis has become a daily occurrence. Social media fights take over our thoughts. Jobs are becoming obsolete. We’re in drastic climate change. New problems are being invented constantly, and the world needs a whole new type of community to emerge. 

What the world needs now are people who can see the patterns around them and identify the problems in any situation. We need people to figure out ways to solve the problems, organize fluid teams, lead collective action and then continually adapt as situations change. This takes humans who are capable of exploring and inventing, who have a belief that they have agency over their own lives. 

But when you’re mapping out a new paradigm and solving puzzles, you may find yourself stepping on the toes of others who want their paradigm to stay a certain way, or who disagree with the way you’re solving the problems you’re tackling.

This can create socially polarized environments which leads to broken relationships and communities. However, avoiding conflict is also isolating. Dancing around issues of contention without actively building towards resolution also fractures relationships. 

The only real solution is to handle the matter head-on by building an understanding of each conflicting viewpoint at a deeper level. This is what creates human bonds. This is the kind of interaction we need to enable.

In the past, my most common response to controversy is to give in to whoever is inciting the conflict and “put the fire out,” as quickly as possible. Often in these cases I leave the situation feeling like I haven’t stayed true to myself or my boundaries, which gives me an unfavourable perception of the person or community I was just relating to. Consequently this leads to me desiring to take my loyalty and contributions elsewhere, to a place where I feel a greater sense of value and support. But this isn’t necessarily the best option. 

So in the effort to evolve my life skills I’ve been doing research to define the steps needed to deal with controversy and still stay strong in a healthy way. Here’s what I’ve come up with. 

1. Come to Terms With Getting Your Ass Kicked

“I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.” —Brené Brown 

This is a hard one to swallow. But as exhausting as it may be, it's important to realize this new reality. You are an alternative person who’s continually exploring new ways of solving problems, so it’s unlikely that you will be able to move through the world without inciting controversy, even if your motives are pure.

Exploration takes risk, and risk often incites controversy. Get comfortable with this fact.

2. Assess the Source

“It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is in the arena. Whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly ... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly ...” -Theodore Roosevelt 

There should always be a hierarchy of the critics who matter. Are the participants who are engaging in the conversation regular contributors, valued community members, or resemble something closer to trolls? The critics whose opinions truly matter should be your closest relationships, the individuals who know your heart and your intentions.

Next should be the people you find admirable, who are also in the arena trying to solve problems and create a better world. But if the people who are critiquing your ideas aren’t the ones contributing to solutions, you should probably take their opinions with a grain of salt. 

3. Actively Listen

“The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'.” -Alfred Brendel 

Even if you don’t put a lot of stock in the source, everyone deserves to be heard. Fully listening to the speaker can help you to draw people out, avoid misunderstandings, foster collaboration, settle disagreements and gain people’s trust. Often controversy can be solved by people feeling heard. 

4. Internalize the Viewpoint

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” -Winston Churchill

Once you feel that you’ve fully understood another perspective, take step back and hold that opinion up to your values. Does it align with how you want to exist in the world? Is there something you can take away and learn from this discussion?

Whether the conversation changes your opinion doesn’t matter as long as you’ve done the work to fully understand where someone else is coming from. If the conversation has changed your opinion, then graciously move forward into a place of behavioural change. 

5. Be Resilient

“My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.” - Steve Goodier 

You do not have to convince anyone else of your viewpoint in order for your opinions to be valid. Know when to end the conversation and remove yourself from unproductive conversations. (Again, so much easier said than done.)

However if you’ve really done the work to understand another point of view and still disagree with it, then you can feel free to stop arguing and just carry on with your current trajectory. There are ways to do this that are respectful and kind, but making yourself smaller and stopping a behaviour that you really believe in will only hurt your heart in the long run.

Nowadays, controversial issues seem to be at the centre of much of our lives, so learning how to deal with conflict should be central to living an effective life. As uncomfortable as it may be, the more the world changes, the more you’ll face this fact.

The capacity to change the conflictual interactions you have lays within each one of us. You possess the incentives to make this world a better place. Accept it and meet the change. 

Currently, the world is in a state of difficulty, and one of the only solutions we have is for everyone to stay in their homes for the sake of public health. There’s only so much Netflix you can watch before you start crawling up the walls, so here are a couple of creative things you can do it mix it up while you wait this out.

  Purge Your Home

You're home now, so why not spend some time making it feel terrific? I'm sure that there are corners of your house that haven't been touched in years, so now's the perfect time to do a purge and deep clean. 

Go through each area of your house and touch every object that's there. My rule of thumb is that if I haven't used it in the last two years, or I don't have an idea for its use in the next six months, I'll donate it.

Once you've removed everything that isn't useful, rearrange the space to make it feel fresh. Go around the whole house until each area feels useful and exactly how you want it.

Write Appreciation Notes

We're all feeling the burden of isolation right now, and everyone could stand to feel a little extra love. Instead of writing emails or social media messages, switch it up and go old school.

Get a pad of paper and take some time to write a letter to each person in your life you care for. Write down all of the things that you love and appreciate about them. Good memories you have of them, how they make your life better, how special you think they are.

Even if you're not able to mail them right away, just the act of physically writing down beautiful things about others is guaranteed to make you feel better about the world. And once you can mail it, you can bet that it will make those people feel special that you took that time.

Deck of Pain

Want to stay fit even though you're at home? Here's something we've been doing every day; it's called "Deck of Pain." Anyone can do this as long as you have a deck of playing cards.

Since there are four suits in a deck, choose four exercises you want to do that day, e.g., sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and jumping jacks. It's great if you choose four things that target different areas of your body. Assign each exercise to one of the suites.

Flip through the deck of cards one by one, and do the corresponding number of reps and type of movement the card designates. For example, if you choose a 4 of hearts, and the heart suite is sit-ups, you do four sit-ups.

Face cards count as reps of 10, and for Aces, we've been holding Plank for 2 minutes. We change up the movements daily. The whole thing should take about 30 minutes, and by the end, you'll have done about 70 reps of each exercise, and you can feel like a rockstar for staying fit during quarantine! 

Pictionary Telephone

Pictionary Telephone is a game that my friends and I used to play in person, but it can be done remotely. The first person writes down any sentence they feel like. Like, "The iguana ate a giant bug." They send this to the next person in the chain.

The next person quickly draws a picture describing the sentence. It's often hilarious because not everyone is great at drawing. They send the drawing to the next person in line.

The next person writes a sentence describing what the drawing is, and sends it on. Then the next person draws that sentence; then, the next person writes it out, etc. This goes on until it makes it's way back to the original person who wrote the sentence.

The final sequence is then shown to everyone. The results are HILARIOUS and are guaranteed to make you laugh. No time you play it is ever the same, and it's a great way to get your creative juices flowing.

Start Something You've Been Putting Off

We all have that one thing that we keep saying we'd like to do but haven't touched yet. Starting your first novel, taking up beadwork, planning your garden, learning a new dance move, redecorating your living room, wood whittling, learning Spanish… Now is the time people!

It is hard to be forced to be home. So let's find what we can get excited about during this time, instead of just sinking into the couch and watching the 100th episode of that show you're binging.

Not only does creativity reduce stress, but accomplishing goals will help you feel like things are going to be okay, and that there's a future though all this. By using this time to be productive, we'll be that much more prepared to rebuild and support the world around us as soon as we're able to leave our homes again.

In the last week, the coronavirus has escalated from a serious issue to a world pandemic. Governments are implementing never-before thought of travel bans, isolation practices, and extreme measures to try and control this thing. If you're not feeling at least a little bit afraid by now, you're in the minority. 

I'm currently stuck in Utila, Honduras, a place I never thought I'd be during a global crisis. While I'm on a relatively safe island with pretty good food security, the situation keeps getting scarier. The regulations are getting stricter with each passing day, and it's a big unknown around how badly this will escalate.

At this moment in time, the Honduran government has cut our island off from the rest of the country. The grocery stores have been picked over, with no news of when they'll send more supplies to us. Paper mask and glove-wearing military personnel are roaming the island, enforcing an 8 pm curfew, and dispelling large groups of people. You can go to jail if they catch you drinking, with fines if they find you in groups of over 30.

Although this island grows a bunch of its food and we might be completely fine (even way better off than some places), it's hard not to get caught up in patterns of fear about all of the terrifying things that could happen during this. However, being afraid doesn't help anyone; in fact, it makes things way worse. So what can we do when we get stuck in fear?

Take Time To Process

Nothing ever got solved by pretending it doesn't exist. What's happening right now is a big deal, so take the time to sit with it and feel whatever you're feeling. It's okay to feel freaked out or worried for a bit, as long as you don't let those feelings control you.

Take the time to think critically and get educated about what's going on. Stop listening to hype news that sells headlines by telling you how awful everything is. Read the science, listen to people who are experts, and do what they recommend.

However, once you've gotten educated and prepared about the situation, let it go. You control your thoughts; your thoughts don't control you. Once you know that there's nothing left you can do, there's no point in stewing about what may or may not happen. Letting your thoughts spiral is the best way to lose touch with reality, which can cause behaviors that will make the situation worse. At the very least, for yourself, if not others.

Move Your Body

When we get scared, we tense up, telling our sympathetic nervous system to create adrenaline and cortisol. The point of stress is to get our bodies prepared for fight or flight when we're in danger, and the biological response to stress should be a burst of energy that burns off stress hormones.

However, when we're in situations like this, our body doesn't get the chance to respond to our feelings of fear. There's no tiger we can run from, this virus is invisible, and stress won't help us fight it. So we close down, we hunch up, and our body creates even more hormones to compensate. The cycle that this creates makes our bodies feel even more uncomfortable and helpless.

The great thing about this is that almost any form of motion can remove these hormones from your body. I know we may all be stuck inside, but instead of just fear-watching tv, take the time to move. Do yoga, dance around, learn tai chi, follow a workout video. Doing anything at all will increase your sense of well-being, pump up your endorphins, and help remove your fear.

Help Others

When we feel afraid, our focus gets narrow, and we can only think about what's best for ourselves. That's fine if we're dealing with immediate danger (like the tiger), but bad when it comes to sustained issues. Problems like this require long term problem solving and community participation, so we need to get our brains out of fight or flight.

One of the best ways to move your brain out of its fear is to think about others. Start to focus on what someone more disadvantaged than you might need in this situation and then brainstorm ways you can help. Doing this not only will make your community better, but it will also make you feel less afraid.

Doing good is proven to help reduce stress and increase feelings of well-being. When we nurture others, it positively affects our physiology and releases oxytocin, the natural cure for fear. When we help others, we're also helping ourselves, and the whole community benefits as a result.

Be Grateful

The science behind gratitude is pretty compelling. People who have regular gratitude practices are proven to have more positive emotions, feel more engaged with and happy about their lives, show more compassion, experience less stress, sleep better, and have more robust immune systems. No matter how rough your current situation, there's always something to be grateful for. 

Gratitude is an affirmation of the world being a good place. It reminds us of all the beauty in the world, and all of the benefits we receive on a daily basis. It helps us block our natural tendencies towards negativity that ruins our happiness. When you're in gratitude, it's pretty impossible to experience feelings of resentment, anger, or fear.

It also helps us realize where goodness stems from, which is often our community. It strengthens relationships because it makes us understand how much other's support us. It reminds us to acknowledge other people, which in turn makes us feel more connected and benevolent to the world around us.

One of the best things to do when you're experiencing fear is to take some time to be grateful for what you have. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, turn your thoughts to all of the ways you're supported and okay. Spend some time writing them down or tell them to others. It will naturally remove the stress from your body, making you calmer, better able to problem solve, and happier about your situation.

Get Creative

We're currently in a situation, unlike anything we've experienced before. In all likelihood, this pandemic will not only lose us lives but also bankrupt many of us and tank world economies. It's hard not to get overwhelmed when thinking about the possible outcomes.

Since we've never experienced this before, we're going to need to use creative problem solving to figure out solutions where conventional thinking has failed. It's time to play, dream, and imagine. It's time to innovate and move the world in exciting new directions. Imagination is the key to solving this, and it needs to start with everyone.

Spend some time thinking about what you want your future to look like. Draw it, write it, talk about it. Be positive; get excited about the potential. Don't limit yourself but think as far outside of the box as you can imagine. As an artist, I play with this all of the time, and it's one of the skills that help me turn the impossible into reality. I know that I can create anything from thought, but it has to start with the dream.

One of the greatest things about using your imagination like this is that your brain doesn't actually differentiate between your thoughts and your experiences. It is one of the principles of positive visualization. When you let your imagination joyfully run wild with potential, excellent physical responses follow. When we play with possibilities, we make ourselves happier with the potential of creating real change.

We Can Do This

I know that it's really scary for some of us right now. It's hard to be locked in our houses, hard not obsessively to watch the news. It's going to take some real self-work to be calm and productive about this. However, I do believe that the best way to get through this is by taking care of ourselves and remaining a community.

The whole world is our community right now, and we need to have each other's backs. If we do the work to dilute our fear and help each other, I believe that we can come out of this stronger.