Election Sanity Saver 1: Learning From Our Tendencies

In this first talk, Ada and Nathan share their personal responses to election season. Like many of us, you may feel a mix of frustration, anger, and even fear as the political landscape intensifies. In this session, we’ll acknowledge these emotions without judgment, welcoming them as an opportunity to explore how to find our center amidst the noise. Together, we invite you to reconnect with a place of inner calm, empowering us to engage with clarity and compassion instead of reactivity. Cultivating this awareness offers tools to navigate political conversations and interactions with an open heart.

The “Election Sanity Saver” series is designed to help you stay grounded, compassionate, and connected. Each conversation and practice builds upon this goal, guiding you through exercises that nurture presence, empathy, and resilience. By embarking on this journey, you’re giving yourself the gift of engaging with the world while remaining rooted in peace.

Transcript

I,

For one,

Am very politically engaged.

I really like knowing what's going on.

I listen to the news.

I,

You know,

I definitely consume a lot of content in that way.

And sometimes it's easy to get sucked down that rabbit hole.

And I feel like I want to come back to my center as well,

Because I definitely have been feeling at my edge.

I've been feeling crazy at times,

You know,

Over everything that's going on.

And I feel afraid.

I feel afraid of what's going to happen.

So I know that I need to come back to center,

Come into a place of calm.

And I know that the more of us that are doing that,

The more we can be engaged in a way that's more positive than negative.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I think for myself,

I notice the frustration and the anger that arises in me and the avoidance.

I don't want to engage with what's going on.

I don't want to know.

I just want to check out.

I don't want to watch the news when I was watching it.

We're opposite.

Yeah.

I absolutely just like,

I'm like,

I don't want that energy.

But,

You know,

I think it's important to be engaged and to know what's going on,

Because it's only through our understanding of the situation that we can truly,

That we can really be effective.

We can't just tune out completely.

And,

You know,

Especially when we have a vote that matters,

We need to be informed.

And so I want to be able to show up to what is going on and to be compassionate for all the different perspectives and to be,

Have my heart open to listen to what people have to say,

What fears they have,

What frustrations they have,

Without my own angst and frustration and wishing that they didn't feel the way that they feel.

Yeah.

Because we all just feel the ways that we feel,

And we need to be heard and recognized for that.

This election season is taking us all to our edges in so many ways.

Oftentimes,

We think about our edges,

Especially when it comes to stressful situations like our current context in America,

As pretty negative.

It feels hard to be at our edges.

It feels hard to be pushed to frustration and to anger and to confusion and distrust.

These are really tough emotions,

But it's an opportunity to see ourselves and to learn about ourselves at those edges.

As we meet the edges of our tolerance,

The edges of our patience,

The edges of our allowing of what is going on in life,

We get to learn so much more about ourselves,

And we get to step into new insight about life and about how we can show up and about where there's space for us to breathe our love and our power and our awareness into the current situation.

Because we can't control the world.

We can't control our nation.

We can't control our leaders.

We can vote for the people that we believe in,

And we absolutely have a say there,

And we absolutely have an influence in the conversations that we have.

But the change starts within us.

We can start to make that change within ourselves to develop more compassion,

To develop more courage,

To show up in the face of so much tension with more understanding and more peace for ourselves to be sane during this time so that we aren't killing ourselves with all of the anger and all of the resentment that we have inside of us,

But also for the sake of this nation,

For the sake of our communities,

For the sake of our families.

It's so important,

Especially as we come up into the holidays,

If we're going to be spending time with our families and the different perspectives that we meet in those spaces that we can show up with compassion so that we can hear one another.

Because real change only happens when we can actually listen to each other and when we feel like we have the space to hold all the complexity of what is going on in the world.

Reviews

I just discovered this... And I find it helpful now as unwanted changes continue in this country. Thank you. I look forward to listening to the rest of your election sanity talks 💜🌹🙏

Ada and Nathan, thank you so much for making these talks and for your new song. I really need something like this in the wake of feeling the heaviness of our election outcome. As I listened to you two, I realized Jon and I are very similar. Jon is like you Ada in being very involved in the process and I tend to want to distance myself from the tension like you Nathan. I so appreciate you sharing that because it shows me both are ok. We need this healing more than ever. I was told that by someone who attended our sound bath offerings. We are all needed for healing 💖🙏🏼

So well said l look forward to hearing all of these! Thank you for sharing. 💕

Ugh. So hard to not feel this uncomfortableness with the uncertainty of tomorrow’s election. I try to listen with an open heart and an open mind, but it is difficult when it doesn’t compute in my brain. It’s difficult to have a conversation with someone when their beliefs or ideologies are based on proven misinformation by reputable non-partisan sources. I’ve stayed away as much as possible from all media and political conversations, but as much as I’ve disengaged, I still can’t seem to shake off this heaviness in my heart and gut. When the anxiety wants to take over, I pray. 🤲 My spirit has been in constant prayer 🙏🏻 and I’ve been practicing a lot of Metta meditation.

So good for those of us who are anxious to be acknowledged. Thank you both 🙏🏻