The saying is actually “Think global, act local” but I made a tweak recently that is helping me focus my strong emotions and unwieldy thoughts.
Last week, I went back to Brené Brown’s beautiful book of emotions, Atlas of the Heart. I read it back in 2021 when it was published and I was also subsumed by so many emotions and thoughts. I remember it being like a calming salve, and this revisiting did not disappoint.
She defines worry as “a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen in the future”. And oh how accurate that feels. And also how fruitless.
Worry is endless. There is a litany of possibilities of bad things that might happen (there is also a litany of possibilities of GOOD things that might happen, but we don’t worry about those…) and all those thoughts do are pin us in place, where we then spiral down down down. There is no easy or fast answer, at least partly because the vast majority of those endless possibilities are completely out of our control.
But what IS in our control is how we act in our own domain. In our own lives. With the people we love, with the people around us, with the people within our reach.
And that is where I am focusing. I think about the 11-year-old girl down the street who holds bake sales, the friend who is experiencing a major relationship challenge, the colleague whose life is stretched caring for aging parents, the family friend who is coping with a new diagnosis…there are so many immediately around me that I can reach out and care for.
I can worry globally, or I can act locally. So I am opting for the latter. To focus on what I can do, what is in my control, what I can choose. Right now, today, tomorrow.
