Discomfort: A Counterintuitive Source of Hope | Sebene Selassie

1. Practice Mindfulness for Capacity

Cultivate hope by building the capacity to be with your experience through mindfulness practice, allowing you to see what is happening clearly and meet it with kindness and care, rather than bringing old patterns.

2. Stay Calm & Clear

To respond open-heartedly and grounded in strength, practice staying calm and clear in challenging moments, rather than defaulting to defensiveness or a ‘defended heart’ energy.

3. Don’t Contend with Reality

Hope is about trust and not being in contention with reality; avoid resisting things as they are, recognizing that challenges are opportunities.

4. Practice ‘Let It Be’

Instead of ’let go’ (which can imply aversion or control), practice ’let it be’ to cultivate trust and patience, opening to reality without contention or closing off.

5. Practice Both Mindfulness & Loving-Kindness

To generate hope and capacity, practice both Vipassana mindfulness (watching breath and noting what comes up) and loving-kindness (deliberately training warmth and care).

6. Integrate Study and Practice

Combine meditation practice with study to cultivate wisdom, which is the fruition of practice and helps in understanding the nature of reality.

7. Commit to Self-Knowledge Practice

Make a commitment to cultivating practice to develop the capacity to see what is happening and to know yourself well, including your defenses, habits, and deep-seated patterns.

8. Thaw Numbing & Defended Heart

Recognize and cultivate the capacity to thaw out numbing or a ‘defended heart’ energy that prevents engagement with difficult issues, whether in relationships or with the natural world.

9. Cultivate Hope in Community

Cultivate hope by engaging in relationships, listening to podcasts, talking with friends, and exploring the work of others, as it is difficult to cultivate hope in isolation.

10. Practice Active Listening & Self-Report

In difficult conversations, reflect back what the other person has said in your own words to demonstrate understanding, and report back your feelings in real time.

11. Prepare for Difficult Conversations

For important and challenging conversations, work with communication coaches or role-play the discussion to clarify what you want to communicate and avoid screwing it up.

12. Dedicate Time for Difficult Conversations

When addressing challenging relationship issues, set a specific date, clear your calendar, and dedicate ample time to settle in and thoroughly explore the conversation.

13. Practice Open-Hearted Listening

In challenging conversations, be able to hear others, open your heart, and articulate your present experience (like a Vipassana out loud) to cultivate intimacy and resolve conflict.

14. Build Bridges Across Differences

Cultivate hope by building bridges and creating a real sense of community, especially with people from radically different backgrounds, to overcome distance in relationships.

15. Understand Impermanence

Cultivate wisdom by understanding that things are impermanent; panic, anxiety, sadness, and loneliness will pass, just as good moments do.

16. Understand Karma (Causes & Conditions)

Develop wise understanding by recognizing karma as the principle of causes and conditions, acknowledging that countless factors lead to the present moment.

17. Understand Nature of Reality

Use your practice to understand the nature of reality on a personal level, seeing clearly and meeting things with care and kindness, then apply this understanding more deeply to everything.

18. Meet Reality with Response

After understanding causes and conditions, meet reality with an appropriate next-step response, rather than contending with or resisting it.

19. Ground, Process, Compost, Mourn

When faced with overwhelming situations, practice grounding, processing, composting, mourning, and understanding to meet challenges with clarity and kindness, rather than being drained by resistance.

20. Discipline News Intake & Boundaries

Practice discipline in what and how you take in news, creating boundaries to stay informed without letting compulsions or incapacity throw you off balance and diminish hope.

21. Titrate News & Slot into Geological Time

Manage overwhelming information by titrating your news intake and slotting your perspective into geological time, recognizing your place in a much larger system.

22. Practice Mindfulness of Elements

Engage in the classical mindfulness of elements practice (earth, water, fire, air) to dissolve barriers and recognize the lack of separation between yourself and everything else, fostering interconnection.

23. Practice Earth Element Mindfulness

In the mindfulness of elements practice, feel earth as the density and solidity of your body (flesh, bone, fat, muscle), and then reflect on the solidity of objects around you, such as the ground or furniture.

24. Practice Water Element Mindfulness

In the mindfulness of elements practice, sense the fluid nature of water in your body (saliva, eye moisture, sweat, water in bones), then reflect on the water element externally, like the planet’s water.

25. Practice Fire Element Mindfulness

In the mindfulness of elements practice, feel temperature and heat in your body, relating this transformational, energetic quality to external fire, heat, and energy like the sun, and the potential for change.

26. Practice Air Element Mindfulness

In the mindfulness of elements practice, be aware of the subtle, ephemeral air element through your breath, recognizing its profound connection to everything as we literally breathe each other’s air throughout time.

27. Cultivate Relationship with Nature

Use the elements practice as a starting point to cultivate moment-to-moment relationships with nature, including animals, plants, and even everyday elements like fire in a stovetop or water in a shower, to dissolve the sense of separation.

28. Read Books About Nature

Read books about nature, like ‘The Overstory’ about trees, to foster a relationship with the natural world, making issues like the climate crisis less abstract and more of a lived experience.

29. Look Inward Before Collective Action

Before engaging in collective or global action, first look inward and address your own relationship to issues, as this personal work is a necessary step.

30. Recognize Porous Boundaries

By seeing the porous boundary between yourself and everything else, you can get out of your head, feel less central, and experience a lightness and hope.

31. Trust Something Bigger

Cultivate hope by trusting in something bigger than your individual ego, recognizing that solutions may not always come from purely rational or logical steps.

32. Imagine Different Possibilities

Free up your energy and cultivate trust to imagine different possibilities, as this can open up new solutions and inventions, rather than feeling doomed.

33. Accept Long-Term Impact

When working towards positive change, accept that the full benefits of your actions might not show up in your lifetime, as suggested by the Dalai Lama.

34. ‘Let It Be’ for Change

Use ’let it be’ to both accept reality without contention and to mystically envision and bring into being a different, better future, balancing acceptance with the drive for change.

35. Notice Emotions, Envision Change

When experiencing difficult emotions like anger or fear, notice them and ’let them be’ without fighting or feeding them, while also envisioning a different world without being overly attached to immediate results.

36. Stay Informed, Avoid Micromanaging

Stay informed about current events, but be careful not to take in every piece of news or micromanage situations over which you have no actual power, avoiding excessive opinions.

37. Cultivate Gratitude for Leaders

Develop a gratitude practice towards politicians and policymakers who have taken on huge responsibilities, especially in challenging moments like a pandemic.

38. Participate & Support Community

Participate as a citizen through voting, donations, and volunteering; control what you can by focusing on your health and the health of those around you, and actively check in on friends and family, especially those isolated.

39. Contribute Without Burning Out

Find ways to contribute that feel manageable and avoid burning out, recognizing that even small actions can help others and be a source of hope.

40. Cultivate Intimacy & Imagination

Foster intimacy with your own experience and the experience of others, as this relationship between intimacy and imagination can open up new possibilities and deepen connections in small, mysterious ways.

41. Check Previous Episode

If you missed part one of the hope series with George Mumford, go check it out to understand hope as a skill.

42. Read ‘You Belong’

Read Sebene Selassie’s book ‘You Belong’ as it is an amazing book.

43. Consider Therapy or Trauma Work

If deep-seated patterns are stuck, consider therapy, trauma work, or somatic work to shift reactivity, activation, or triggers.

44. Download 10% with Dan Harris App

Download the new ‘10% with Dan Harris’ app for guided meditations, weekly live Zoom community sessions, and ad-free podcast episodes, with a 14-day trial available at danharris.com.