Eight Things I'm Doing To Stay Sane During Election Season | Dan Harris
Dan Harris shares eight personal strategies to manage election-induced anxiety, reframing the turbulent period as a "workout" to practice mental skills. He emphasizes mindfulness, balanced news consumption, and communication techniques to foster peace of mind.
Deep Dive Analysis
10 Topic Outline
Introduction: Reframing Election Anxiety as a Workout
Caveats for Personal Strategies to Manage Stress
Mindfulness: Seeing Your Mind Without Getting Carried Away
Limiting and Diversifying News Consumption
The Benefits of Open-Mindedness and Avoiding Epistemic Closure
Practicing Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation
Communication Skills for Disagreement: Braver Angels Rules
Action Absorbs Anxiety: Taking Local Action
Never Worry Alone: The Importance of Relationships
Self-Compassion: Being Kind to Yourself During Stress
5 Key Concepts
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the ability to observe what is happening in your mind at any given moment without getting carried away by it. It allows you to see thoughts, urges, and emotions with nonjudgmental remove, helping you respond wisely instead of reacting blindly.
Open-mindedness
Open-mindedness involves consuming diverse news sources and perspectives from across the ideological spectrum. This practice can reduce anxiety by fostering understanding of different viewpoints, even if you disagree, and has been shown to increase life satisfaction and mitigate conflict.
Loving Kindness Meditation (Metta)
Metta meditation is a practice designed as an antidote to fear, where you silently send phrases of well-wishing ('May you be happy, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease') to yourself and others. It cultivates warmth and compassion, helping you approach disagreements with a different mindset.
Accurate Disagreement
This is a communication goal where the objective is not to convince someone to change their mind, but rather to clearly understand why they think the way they do. It allows for a healthy interaction where differing viewpoints are acknowledged and understood without hostility.
Self-compassion
Self-compassion is the practice of treating yourself with the same kindness, understanding, and forgiveness you would offer a good friend or a child. Research shows it makes people more effective, helps establish habits, builds resilience, and aids in achieving goals.
7 Questions Answered
You can reframe the election as a 'workout' or 'dojo' to practice skills like mindfulness, open-mindedness, and self-compassion, which are trainable and can help you respond wisely instead of reacting blindly to the turbulence.
Find a comfortable, quiet position and close your eyes, then bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath. When your mind inevitably gets distracted, simply notice it and gently return your attention to your breath, repeating this process.
Consuming news from across the ideological spectrum can actually calm anxiety by helping you understand the logic behind different viewpoints, rather than blindly hating, and fosters open-mindedness, which is linked to reduced depression and increased life satisfaction.
Focus on understanding their perspective rather than changing their mind, use 'I statements' to express your own experience and feelings, and avoid characterizing the other person's opinion, instead stating your own.
Taking local action, such as volunteering or helping family and friends, can absorb anxiety and provide a sense of empowerment. This counter-programs the overwhelming sense of helplessness that can arise from macro situations like a turbulent election.
According to the Harvard Study for Adult Development, the most important variable for a long, healthy, and happy life is the quality of your relationships, as strong connections provide a significant buffer against stress.
By treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer a good friend, self-compassion helps you be more effective, establish habits, build resilience, and achieve your goals, especially when you inevitably fall short or make mistakes.
13 Actionable Insights
1. Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Find a comfortable position, bring your full attention to your breath (or other sensations), and notice when your mind wanders, then gently return to the breath. This helps you get familiar with your mind, respond wisely, and reduce anxiety.
2. Limit News Consumption
Actively reduce your news and social media consumption to avoid being overwhelmed. Use self-awareness, fostered by mindfulness, to notice when you’ve gone too far and it’s time to disengage.
3. Diversify News Sources
Consume news from various ideological perspectives (left, right, center) and follow people you disagree with. This can calm anxiety by fostering understanding and open-mindedness, rather than blind hatred or epistemic closure.
4. Practice Loving Kindness
Silently send phrases like ‘May you be happy, safe, healthy, live with ease’ to an easy person to love, then yourself, a mentor, a neutral person, a difficult person, and finally all beings. This builds warmth and compassion, helping you engage with differing views.
5. Don’t Change Minds
When conversing with others, especially those you disagree with, do not try to change their mind. This prevents them from feeling attacked and encourages openness, aiming for ‘accurate disagreement’ instead of conviction.
6. Use ‘I’ Statements
When discussing issues, speak from your own experience using ‘I’ statements (e.g., ‘I’m worried that…’) rather than making grand ’truth statements’ or characterizing others. This makes your message more palatable and effective.
7. Characterize Your Own Opinion
Avoid characterizing the other person’s or side’s opinion; instead, stick to describing your own views. This prevents alienating the other person and keeps the conversation constructive.
8. Take Local Action
Combat feelings of helplessness and absorb anxiety by taking local action, such as volunteering for a political campaign, at an animal shelter, or helping family/friends. This provides a sense of purpose and stiffens your spine.
9. Tune Into Caring
When experiencing anger or fear, use mindfulness to identify the underlying emotion, which is often caring. Let this caring motivate your actions, as it’s a ‘cleaner burning fuel’ than fear or anger.
10. Embrace Tatra Maja Tata
Use the phrase ‘Tatra Maja Tata’ (meaning ‘right there in the middle of it’) as an incantation to remind yourself that even amidst chaos, you have the capacity to find calm and not be constantly overwhelmed.
11. Never Worry Alone
Actively reach out to friends to discuss your worries and get their perspectives, as strong relationships are the most important variable for a long, healthy, and happy life, and a buffer against stress.
12. Practice Self-Compassion
When you inevitably fall short or forget advice, treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would a good friend or child, rather than self-criticism. This increases effectiveness, habit formation, and resilience.
13. Ask ‘What Do I Need?’
Regularly ask yourself, ‘What do I need right now?’ to guide your decisions and actions, especially during stressful times. This serves as a ‘North Star’ for self-care and effective behavior.
9 Key Quotes
The mind and the brain are trainable. That peace of mind, happiness, compassion, gratitude, generosity, these are not unalterable factory settings. They're skills that can be trained through various modalities.
Dan Harris
The whole goal here is not to clear the mind. It's to get familiar with the mind. And in that familiarity, once you see how wild the mind is, it doesn't own you as much.
Dan Harris
If you're only following people on this website who you agree with, you're doing it wrong.
Ian Bremmer (quoted by Dan Harris)
If we were to read the secret history of our enemies, we would find enough sorrow to disarm all hostility.
Longfellow (quoted by Dan Harris)
Thou shalt not judge because thou has fucked up before too.
Sonia Renee Taylor (quoted by Dan Harris)
Action absorbs anxiety.
Dan Harris
If a problem can be solved, there's no use worrying about it. If it can't be solved, worrying will do no good.
Dalai Lama (quoted by Dan Harris)
The most important variable for long and healthy and happy life is not sleep or exercise or achieving ketosis or whatever. It's the quality of your relationships.
Robert Waldinger (quoted by Dan Harris)
What do I need right now?
Kristen Neff (quoted by Dan Harris)
3 Protocols
Beginning Mindfulness Meditation
Dan Harris- Find a comfortable position in a reasonably quiet place (can be sitting in a chair or lying down). Close your eyes.
- Bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, picking one spot like your nose, chest, or belly to feel the raw physical sensations. (If breath makes you anxious, pick something else like the feeling of your full body, hands, or sounds in the environment).
- When your mind inevitably becomes distracted by thoughts, urges, or emotions, simply notice that you've become distracted and gently return your attention to your breath, starting again and again.
Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation
Dan Harris- Find a comfortable position and close your eyes.
- Bring to mind an easy person to love (e.g., a child, a great friend, a pet) and create a mental image or felt sense. Silently send four phrases: 'May you be happy, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease.'
- Move to yourself (imagine yourself as a kid or feel your body) and send the same four phrases.
- Move to a mentor (someone who has helped you in life, or an admired public/historical figure) and send the same four phrases.
- Move to a neutral person (someone you might overlook, like a barista or cleaning staff) and send the same four phrases.
- Move to a difficult person (start with someone mildly annoying, not the most difficult) and send the same four phrases.
- Finally, extend the phrases to everybody, all beings everywhere: 'May we all be happy, may we all be safe, may we all be healthy, may we all live with ease.'
Braver Angels Communication Rules for Disagreement
Dan Harris (attributing Braver Angels)- Don't try to change anybody's mind; the goal is to understand why they think the way they do, aiming for 'accurate disagreement.'
- Make 'I statements' (talk about yourself and your own experience) rather than 'truth statements' (grand, sweeping declarations about issues).
- Don't characterize the other person's opinion or the other side's opinion; just characterize your own opinion.