Photo by Rachel Krantz

Nearly everyone I talk to feels despair over the state of the world right now. If you’re a person who cares, you likely feel pervasive anxiety about the many, many, many important problems you can’t control or entirely solve. That leads to an understandable sense of overwhelm, existential dread, resignation, cynicism, and even nihilism.

I think about the millennial saying “can’t even” — and I get it. But I also don’t want to identify with it. I want to be someone who can even. So I decided to starta podcast called Help Existing for accountability and help with just that. Each week, I’ll interview wise and helpful people who can offer me — and anyone who listens — various pieces of advice on different, specific aspects of existence. And then I will translate those interviews into regular service pieces like this one, on Medium.

It certainly won’t solve the world’s problems, but it feels like something tangible I can do.

What follows are not suggestions about solving societal problems on a structural scale. This is about how we, on a personal level, can deal with the very specific feeling of overwhelm over the fact that we can’t fix everything — and never will. How can you hold that reality without devolving into nihilism, hopeless anxiety, and despair? How can you be realistic while also taking care of yourself and being helpful?

I knew exactly who to ask. Monk Tashi Nyima, an ordained Buddhist monk who’s worked as an activist with some of the world’s most vulnerable populations for decades, and who, as far as I can tell, never gets lost in despair. Tashi’s someone who’s helped me on a personal level incredibly since I met him. (If you read my memoir, Open, you’ll recognize him as the monk from the end who I talk about non-monogamy and non-attachment with.)

Tashi’s warm and practical suggestions are aimed at helping us think about our interconnectedness, our gratitude, and our skills in a way that gives us hope and energy to be helpful in the best way we can. I hope you find them as useful as I have!

1. Understand the Concept of Interdependence

The concept of interdependence is exactly what it sounds like: it’s the idea that everything on Earth (and in the universe) is connected. The scientific evidence abounds for why this is true, but Monk Tashi Nyima says the issue is we don’t believe this concept on a visceral level.

“We don’t believe that little changes here, in this place, have an effect somewhere else. So we think, ‘if I can’t act on the entire problem, then I am doing nothing.’ And that is false. By the fact — not the theory — by the fact of interdependence. Whatever small improvement that we can make in any place at any time affects everything else because every single part of the totality affects the quality of the totality. So we need to recover that sense that what we do here matters everywhere.”

Tashi says he believes this is the antidote to the sense of helplessness about the state of the world. We’re overwhelmed by the sheer scale of suffering, and in that overwhelm, we freeze up and don’t help much. “It’s almost a cliche to say, you know, ‘we can’t change the world for everybody, but we can change the situation for somebody.’ And that is certainly true of the good that we can do. There are fantastic changes that we can effect on our environment, on our neighbors, should not be minimized.”

2. Start With Cleaning Up Your Corner

To foster your sense of ability to help, you might want to start with the concept of “cleaning up your corner.” That means addressing your individual conduct first. You might wonder, as I did, how big problems like climate change would be solved if everyone took that approach. But Tashi countered that it is exactly these big problems that would be most impacted by collective individual changes in consumption.

For example, he said, “it’s a known certainty that one of the best things that we can do to improve environmental conditions in the world is to stop eating animals. If there is no demand, there will be no production. If there is no production, that deforestation, that contamination of the water, that contamination of the earth will stop. So whatever we do can have a ripple effect on everything. Because the system in which we operate in is a capitalistic system, we hold the power of the purse. And if we can vote with our dollars, then we can actually create great changes.”

3. Practice Unplugging & Noticing Your Surroundings

Cleaning up your corner starts with your own mind. To give a quick example of how this played out in my life: I recently decided to take more walks without headphones in. I realized I wasn’t giving myself enough time, as a writer and human, to simply walk and think. That was about cleaning up the corner closest to me — my own mind and ability to be present without distraction.

One day, I was walking in the complex where I live, when I heard an elderly man coughing. He was nodding off in a hot tub, and he was disoriented and coughing. It was only because I didn’t have headphones in that I heard him, and therefore noticed him and got help. It turned out he had to go to the hospital; he’d been left alone there for five hours. In this case, it was only because I’d decided to work on one small aspect of my individual conduct that I was aware enough to help someone else.

4. Remember That Your Worrying Is Actively Counterproductive

Sometimes, when we watch the news, we can get so worked up in righteous indignation that we think we are actually engaging in a meaningful way. But if your worry only leads to anxiety — not action — Tashi says it is actually harmful.

“Worrying about what is beyond our control is actually not only useless, it’s counterproductive because then we stop doing that which we can do. And if everybody did just as much as they can do, it would create enormous waves of change,” he said. “So we need to stop believing this false idea that we are powerless. We have so much power. We have the power to change our own minds. We have the power to change our relationships. We have the power to choose what we consume and what we do not consume. And more importantly, we have the power not to be overwhelmed by disasters, tragedies, and problems.”

5. Look for the Helpers

Tashi suggests that in order to begin combating our sense of despair, we should follow Mr. Rogers’ mother’s advice to “focus on the helpers,” instead of on the problems. When you focus on the helpers, you get inspiration to be more helpful yourself. “But we can’t go around saying, ‘Oh, this is bad, that is bad,’” Tashi said. “It’s much more helpful to say, ‘that one’s doing something good. I might, you know, put my shoulder into that, and make their effort fruitful.’”

6. Set Limits With News & Social Media

Tashi suggests a news aggregator and prioritizing sources that don’t engage in clickbait or alarmism. He also suggests setting time limits on consuming media. “Check the news once a day. If you’re not negotiating peace in Ukraine, you don’t actually need to have an hour-by-hour understanding of it. Your information can wait until tomorrow.” Remember that you are likely draining your energy by the worry it will induce, rather than using that time to actively be helpful.

Personally, springing for the Premium version of Freedom and reading the book How To Break Up With Your Phone has helped me immensely with cutting down on my social media consumption.

7. Consider Your Area of Helping Specialty

If you have limited capacity, as all of us do, then you also should limit your fields of activity. In the Buddhist scriptures, even the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas have areas of specialty called “fields of activity.” Some are more dedicated to certain causes and have different skills than others.

“So, we should take a hint from that and say, I cannot solve all of the problems in the world, but I have a natural affinity for this particular group, for this particular issue, and then focus there,” Tashi said. “And then those things that are outside of our area of competence, we should trust that there are people who are interested precisely in those areas. There is a natural division of worry and a natural division of concern. Not everybody is going to be concerned with exactly the same things. That is also part of interdependence, knowing that there’s somebody else out there who can handle this. I don’t have to handle it all. I can’t.”

And if you really can’t find anyone else who’s helping what you are concerned about? Then maybe it is on you to be that person.

8. Understand the Concept of a Virtuous Cycle

Photo by Rachel Krantz

The virtuous cycle is the exact opposite of a vicious cycle. You probably know that a vicious cycle is something that creates a negative condition that loops back and creates further negativity in the mind, leading to further negativity in speech and action. A virtuous cycle is exactly the opposite.

“When we think positive thoughts, we speak positive words, we do positive actions — those positive actions resonate in the minds of others, and induce a tendency to think positively, speak positively, and act positively. So it’s a feedback loop that continues to increase that virtue, that positive energy,” Tashi said. “So a virtuous cycle is basically utilizing one’s thoughts, words, and deeds to promote positive thoughts, words, and deeds in others.”

9. Connect With & Actively Validate Strangers

One way to help create a virtuous cycle is to connect with strangers. When you’re at the grocery store, make eye contact with people, and smile. Thank the people at the checkout for their help, and validate their work and effort. That not only makes you feel good, which in turn gives you more energy to keep that virtuous cycle going — but also hopefully helps keep the virtuous cycle going for everyone you interact with. Because of the way we’ve gotten more and more used to just being on our phones, we’ve gotten shyer and shyer and have neglected this form of interaction that is deeply human and important.

10. Understand Why You Affix Your Own Oxygen Mask First

“In the ultimate sense, whether we’re talking about a measurable quantity, such as the presence of oxygen in a particular environment, or if we’re talking even about mental attitudes, the fact is that we are useless to others when we ourselves are upset when we are ourselves are in deficit. You cannot give what you don’t have,” Tashi said. “So you have to make sure that you have. You have the resources, you have the serenity, you have the insight, the capacity to help others. Otherwise, you may be creating more problems. You may be inflicting more harm than doing good.” You are using up the limited ambient oxygen, but thinking you’re helping by yelling “fire,” in other words.

“That’s why we have sayings like ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ The good intentions are not actually the cause of hell. It’s good intentions without wisdom, without skill– that’s missing from that saying,” Tashi said. If you only have good intentions, but you haven’t taken the time to figure out, how do I do this? How do I show up with capacity, with resources? —then you are possibly going to cause more harm than good in the end.

11. Consider Which Kind of Friend You’d Rather Be

Tashi asks: if you were in a car with your friend, and, suddenly you had some car trouble, which kind of friend would you prefer to have at your side? “One who starts pulling out his hair and saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible! Oh, we’re gonna die here!’ Or, a friend who would say, ‘we can fix this, let’s figure out what we need to do.’”

Everybody says the second kind. And then Tashi always asks, “And which kind of friend do you want to be? Because you’re always going to be there when there’s a problem, right? When you have a problem, you’re always going to be there. How do you want to show up? Like the guy that pulls out his hair? Or the guy that says ‘we can fix this, let’s figure it out.’ But in order to do that, you have to have cultivated calm. You have to have cultivated tranquility. You have to have cultivated the capacity to see things and not get overwhelmed by emotion.”

Obviously, meditation is the main way to do just that. (If you think you can’t meditate, I will be doing an episode/post at a later time about the many different meditative styles and options — you probably just haven’t found the right style yet.) But in the meantime, below are some additional options that will help cultivate that calm.

12. Practice 10X10 (or Other Kinds of) Breathing

Personally, I really like the above video for a semi-guided 10-minute meditation that prompts your in-breath and out-breath. If that feels like too long a stretch, though, you might choose ten moments during the day when you can take two minutes for yourself — upon waking, before meals, before driving, before meetings, or any time you need a little more peace and clarity — and take ten deep breaths. It takes less than two minutes. If you do this ten times a day, you will have meditated for twenty minutes that day! And if you do it just once, you will have meditated for two minutes, which is better than no minutes.

Although all of us breathe, we don’t always breathe well. To avoid stress and increase mental clarity, we can work on learning to breathe continuously (without pause or interruption); silently (without noise); softly (without pushing or pulling the breath); evenly (without favoring the inhalation or exhalation), and deeply (utilizing the lower 2/3 of the lungs).

Once we train our breathing, we can use it to develop focused attention. We can count our breaths (inhalation and exhalation), from one to 10.

13. Consider Broadening Your Definition of Prayer

In Buddhism, Tashi says, prayer is not about asking someone external to do something external for you — it is about transforming your own thoughts, and mind. No need to believe in any outside force at all. Many Buddhist prayers start with, “may you be happy. May you be ‘free from suffering” — which is an expression of your aspiration, your desire. You might consider praying, then, a way of wishing others well when you feel despair. “At the very least,” Tashi says, “that thought will strengthen our determination to have the resources to help or to inspire others to help.” Remember, anything to feed that virtuous cycle will feed your energy.

14. Ground Yourself — Literally, on the Dirt

Psychologists talk about the idea of grounding when someone is having an anxiety attack or a PTSD response. You notice where you are, and label things like furniture in the room in order to let your fight-or-flight response get the message that right now, at this moment, you are safe.

Tashi suggests extending this idea of grounding to standing on the literal ground — the Earth. We feel ungrounded —but think about it. When was the last time you stood on actual dirt? No wonder we feel unrooted. When you feel anxiety and despair, find a patch of grass somewhere, and connect your feet to the Earth. Remember that you are a part of it.

15. Look at the Sky

In order for us to perceive anything, we have to create an internal mental representation of the object perceived. So when you look at the sky, your mind has to generate an internal mental representation of that amplitude, of space, of clarity. That means that looking at the sky will help you feel more calm and spacious when you are feeling closed down and anxious. And though it will remind you that you are indeed very small, that internal mental representation of spaciousness will also reaffirm that at the same time, you are somehow limitless. Because, as we said before, interconnectedness.

16. Don’t Grasp After Inner Peace

Whatever method of meditation or mindfulness you use, Tashi cautions that you make sure that you do it for the right reasons: so that you can recover your peace and therefore be helpful to others.

“If you do it merely as an escape from stress, you’re actually just stressing yourself more. Looking for peace, trying to grasp at peace, is another form of agitation.” Try to enjoy yourself when you meditate, rather than engaging in a struggle to focus. (I like Thich Nhat Hanh’s image of a pebble at the bottom of the river — unmoving, and without real effort, just existing.)

17. …And Remember Why You Meditate

When you sit down to meditate — or lie down, as I usually do — you can call to mind who you’re doing it for besides yourself. That can sometimes help motivate you to not skip a day because you’re doing it to be a better partner, a better daughter, citizen. Because everyone is interconnected it’s not just about you and something you have to do, but it’s about how you’re going to be, and impact, everyone. And that “everyone,” of course, also includes you.

18. Understand the Difference Between Empathy & Compassion

A book called Altruism by Matthieu Ricard makes the argument, using lots of scientific research, that people don’t suffer from compassion fatigue, but rather from empathy fatigue. The distinction is that empathy means feeling the feelings of others, while compassion means not taking those feelings on as our own suffering, but rather actively doing something to help diminish others’ suffering.

“If you feel the pain of others and you don’t do anything about it, you’re going to be depleted by those negative feelings,” Tashi said. And even if you do something about it, if you really take on their suffering as your own, you will likely become depleted as well. But when you do something to help alleviate suffering, Tashi says, “that compassion actually fills us with energy, with capacity, with a certain optimism. Because we know, it may be little, but it is something. I am doing something.”

19. “A spoonful of salt in a cup of water makes that water taste very salty. But the same spoonful of salt in a large body of water is imperceptible.”

This Buddhist saying essentially means that if we are constantly doing vast amounts of positive actions for others— even small things like holding a door, saying thank you, smiling at people, and validating them — our negative feelings become like that little spoonful of salt in a large body of water. “They’re diluted in this vast body of the water of compassion, which is actually actively doing something to reduce the suffering of others,” Tashi said. If you don’t have a vast body of compassion and positive actions, that spoonful of salt in a tiny cup is going to taste much more bitter.

Tashi says we can all create a vaster “ocean” of compassion, at any moment, by asking ourselves, “‘What can I do today? What can I do right now to make everything a little bit better?’ And if you get into that habit, then your mind doesn’t go to, ‘Oh, woe is me.’ Your mind goes to, ‘Oh, I can help here.’ And the feeling is fantastic. I am sure that each and every one of us has had the experience of helping and feeling better because we’ve helped.”

20. “Give what is right, not what is left.”

Tashi’s teacher used to have an expression: “Give what is right, not what is left.” That means setting a budget for being generous so that it’s less of an impulsive decision and more of a premeditated commitment to generosity.

“Because otherwise what happens is that, yeah, we have our expenses, but then we have our impulse shopping. And if we don’t have set aside a certain amount for generosity, we may eat into it with the silly things, like that extra coconut milk macchiato at Starbucks or whatever,” Tashi said.

If you set a predetermined amount you want to give, like a certain percentage of your expected income, you can always go over, but you won’t give under. It will also allow you to have less decision fatigue — when you see someone asking for money, you can know whether you’ve hit your budget that month or not. If not, you just give. If you have, you can wish them to be happy, and either give above your budget or know you are already doing all you can afford. “That’s what my teacher meant by ‘give what is right, not what is left’ at the end of the month. It’s part of your expenses,” Tashi said. “If being generous, if being kind, is important to you, then include it in your budget.”

Many organizations also have an option for auto-withdrawal each month, if you really don’t want to have to think about it. You’ll likely miss the money less that way as well, though you might not get the same wonderful dopamine hit that is being generous!

21. Remember That Happiness Is Interconnected

The great Buddhist teacher Shantideva said that “All the happiness there is in this world arises from wishing others to be happy. And all the suffering there is in this world arises from wishing oneself to be happy.”

Tashi says this is a key instruction — perhaps in some ways, the only instruction we need. “If we want to separate ourselves and be happy by ourselves, we’re going to cause unimaginable suffering for others and for ourselves.” Whereas if we focus on the happiness of the collective — which includes our own wellbeing — we are bound to feel less isolated, more filled with purpose, and happier.

This teaching might even help you feel compassion for people in the world who do harm. It doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility to also recognize they are clearly suffering. Like Tashi told me in my book, “hurt people hurt people.”

22. “Your path is where your feet are.”

Antonio Machado, a Spanish poet, wrote: “Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; Caminante, no hay camino; se hace camino al andar.” (“Your own footsteps are the path, there is no other path but the one on which you walk.”)

This saying has helped me remember that the path is always exactly where I find myself at that moment in time. “Some people think that to begin traversing the spiritual path, first they must be in a certain ‘place.’” Tashi said. “That idea is mistaken. The path is always exactly where we are. The important thing is to do whatever we are doing with kindness and compassion, and present others with an example that they may want to emulate.”

If we have an aspiration to help the world by helping —wherever we are, right now, at this moment —we will move closer to where we want to be.

23. Prioritize Community

Have you ever noticed how when shared, grief diminishes, yet joy grows? Community helps us feel the reality of interdependence — and many of us have less of it than ever. By prioritizing having at least one community of people in your life — especially the kind of community designed around helping each other and/or others in some way — you are bound to feel less despair, simply because you will remember that your feelings are never yours alone. I like meditation teacher Tara Brach’s saying about this: “It’s not my fear, it’s the fear.”

Even subscribing to certain podcasts or virtual zoom groups can give you a sense of community; so really, even if you prefer not to leave the house, you can find a way to connect.

24. Actively Combat Your Negativity Bias

Humans have a hardwired negativity bias. If you don’t work to actively counteract it, you will notice the bad things more than the good, and be less happy or helpful in the process. Some of the most effective ways I’ve found to retrain the brain to be more on the lookout for the good have to do with gratitude and savoring practices. There are lots of ways to implement these methods into everyday life— everything from gratitude journals to noticing the good drivers while driving.

However, this article is getting way too long, so I’ve decided to write another one on Medium delving into that important subtopic, which I will be posting shortly.

25. Remember That Everything You Do Matters

While Tashi understands why people feel powerless, he also encourages us to dispel that belief.

“Everything you do matters. Every single thing that you do matters. Just think: a little spark can start a huge fire — and that spark can be positive, and that fire can be a positive thing. You never know how much good you will set on its way by a simple, single positive act,” he said. “You may change somebody’s life forever. You may change your own life forever. We don’t know. We don’t know how far-reaching will be the ripples of any small action that we perform. So give yourself credit for your ability to change the world.”

I hope this has been helpful. And please, if you have any suggestions of your own, please slide into my DMs on Twitter and Instagram to let me know. We’re all in this together (in fact, that’s kind of the whole point of this advice).