There are many ways to feed the soul. One approach is for people to do positive things during boring, battling or barbaric times. Doing these things can encourage themselves and other people.
Different people do different things to follow this approach in potentially challenging situations. Let’s look at some examples.
Doing Positive Things
During Boring Times
Some people see boredom as a gift. It gives them the chance to relax, let their mind wander or use their imagination. Some see it as a chance to recharge their batteries.
Some people may choose to do things that give them positive energy. They may walk, play beautiful music or simply potter around. Some may study success or do other things that are stimulating.
Some people may take this approach when experiencing post-purpose syndrome. This can happen after a person has aimed to win a gold medal, sell a business, write a book or reach retirement.
They may feel exhilarated when achieving their goal. The sense of satisfaction may last for a while, but then something else can happen. It may be replaced by a feeling of emptiness, even one of angst.
The person’s sense of purpose has disappeared. There are many strategies for managing post-purpose situations successfully. One is to give themselves permission to rest before tackling the next challenge.
This is a strategy used by some peak performers who have been in a state of flow. They have felt high when competing in an event, performing on stage or doing their best.
Coming out of this state can lead to restlessness. They long to return to feeling fully alive. Sometimes it can be appropriate for them to embark on the next challenge.
One other occasions it can be useful for them to stay fallow for a while. During this time the person can rest, reflect and revitalise themselves. When appropriate, they can research what they want to do next.
Some people do this by focusing on their passions and translating these into doing specific projects. Some clarify their life goals. They then do something each day towards achieving their lifetime picture of success.
Doing Positive Things
During Battling Times
Some people take this approach in what can be seen as battling times. They reframe such situations as a chance to do their best. One person expressed this in the following way.
“Several years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. Some people told me that I could win the fight, but I did not see it as a battle. I reframed it as a project and the chance to do my best.”
People who are having treatment for cancer may do things to brighten their own and other people’s lives. They may wear colourful clothing, appreciate special moments or help other people.
Such people may also see it as a chance to focus on what is really important in life. Some translate their thoughts into action and work towards achieving their life goals.
Maria Popova has passed on knowledge about how people can focus on what they believe is important in life. She aims to encourage the positive spirit in people.
Maria grew up in Bulgaria before leaving for the United States and creating the website Brain Pickings. This has since been renamed as The Marginalian.
In one article she reflected on the lessons she had learned during her time writing the blog. These included the following tips for maintaining a positive spirit during challenging times.
Be generous
Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator.
Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.
Build pockets of stillness into your life
Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming and even boredom.
The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations.
Most important, sleep. Besides being the greatest creative aphrodisiac, sleep also affects our every waking moment, dictates our social rhythm and even mediates our negative moods.
Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time
This is borrowed from the wise and wonderful Debbie Millman, for it’s hard to better capture something so fundamental yet so impatiently overlooked in our culture of immediacy.
The myth of the overnight success is just that – a myth – as well as a reminder that our present definition of success needs serious retuning.
The flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we’re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming. But that’s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny.
Don’t be afraid to be an idealist
E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted half a century ago that the role of the writer is “to lift people up, not lower them down” – a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society.
Seek out what magnifies your spirit
Patti Smith, in discussing William Blake and her creative influences, talks about writers and artists who magnified her spirit – it’s a beautiful phrase and a beautiful notion.
Who are the people, ideas, and books that magnify your spirit? Find them, hold on to them, and visit them often. Use them not only as a remedy once spiritual malaise has already infected your vitality but as a vaccine administered while you are healthy to protect your radiance.
Doing Positive Things
During Barbaric Times
Some people believe in being caring when politicians and others are acting in a cruel way. They believe in doing positive things – and beautiful things – during barbaric times.
Many people have heard about acts of kindness during the persecution of people during the Second World War. Here is an excerpt from a piece by Yasmin Amer for WBUR radio.
Holocaust Survivor Shares The Rare Moments
Of Kindness Amid Unimaginable Cruelty
Edith Rubin, 91, first stepped foot in Auschwitz as a teenager but fortunately, she managed to escape death.
Edith doesn’t like to talk about her painful memories of the Holocaust. She agreed to share her story with Kind World because she wanted to share the moments of kindness she experienced during that dark time in her life.
Edith was 15 when she was separated from her family. Because she was tall for her age, she was sent to work at another camp.
She was forced to do things like shovel snow from one side and back to the other without shoes. She believes the Nazis made them do pointless, gruelling work just to torture them.
Amid the relentless cruelty, Edith prefers to remember the rare moments of kindness that helped restore her faith in humanity. She remembers when she and the other prisoners were forced to march with their heavy shovels.
One day, Edith was struggling to keep up, feeling weak because of a festering wound on her leg. That’s when another prisoner, a young woman, stepped up to help her.
“I don’t even remember her name, but maybe she felt sorry for me because it was hard for me to walk,” recalled Edith.
“She took from me the shovel, and said, ‘I want to do it’ … and when I saw this kindness, then I imagined I had some hope.”
Edith believes this woman may have saved her life. If she’d been caught struggling or if she had collapsed, the Nazis would’ve likely killed her.
Another act of kindness that Edith will never forget came from an unexpected source: an older German guard. Every day, he would take his lunch and set it on the ground for the Jewish prisoners to take.
“He just put it down. Did not say nothing, did not look back,” said Edith. “I will never forget him … it meant that maybe the German people, a lot of them was good and Hitler turned them into what they became.”
After about a year working at the camp, Edith felt physically depleted and wasn’t sure she’d make it. That’s when her story took a turn.
In early 1945, a Swedish diplomat named Folke Bernadotte negotiated the release of thousands of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps.
Edith was one of them. She and several other prisoners got on a train bound for Denmark. At the time, she didn’t know what was happening or where she was going. She was barely conscious.
The next thing she remembers is seeing the face of a young Danish rescuer. Edith, like many of the other prisoners, was covered in sores and lice.
The guards at the camps wouldn’t let them change their clothes or shower. Still, that rescuer held Edith in his arms and asked her what she needed.
“I could not believe it was possible. My heart was full of love,” remembered Edith.
“They gave us everything. They were so good to us. They washed … scrubbed us, not washed us because we were so dirty … It was so beautiful and so kind.”
After the war, Edith’s life changed drastically. She eventually settled in the U.S. and married. She now lives in Los Angeles and has two daughters and three grandchildren.
When Edith looks back on her life and everything she’s overcome, she feels an immense sense of gratitude for the people who gave her hope while she was at the camp – and to the Danish and Swedish rescuers who opened their hearts to refugees like her.
She’s still here, sharing her story, thanks to their extraordinary kindness.
Desmond Tutu also believed it was important to do small things – as well as big things – that lift the spirit. Writing in The Impossible Will Take A Little While, Paul Rogat Loeb, describes how Tutu laughed and loved life.
Tutu, like other social and political activists who haven’t forgotten the importance of enjoyment, passionately embraced the gifts placed before him.
Paul Rogat Loeb says: “Hope is a way of looking at the world.” Writing in The Impossible Will Take A Little While, he says that one person’s actions can inspire others. He describes this in the following way.
We live in a contradictory world. Dispiriting events coincide with progress for human dignity. But when change occurs, it’s because people persist, whatever the nature of their causes.
“The world gets worse. It also gets better,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her wonderful essay Acts of Hope. Change comes, Solnit argues:
“Not by magic, but by the incremental effects of countless acts of courage, love, and commitment, the small drops that wear away stones and carve new landscapes, and sometimes by torrents of popular will that change the world suddenly.”
There are many ways to feed the soul. One approach is to do positive things during boring, battling or barbaric times. This can provide benefits for both yourself and other people.
Looking ahead, can you think a situation where you may want to follow elements of this approach? How can you do this in your own way? What may happen as a result of taking these steps?
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme. This invites you to complete the following sentences.
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