Leaning into All of It – Even the News

For a long time, I never watched or listened to the news.

I don’t want to dwell on the sensational. Or the negative. I don’t want to immerse myself in the vibrational frequency that most news is highlighting. 

Instead, I want to fuel life with positivity. Expansiveness. Possibility. And there is not lot of that in the news these days. 

But there is something about being more present to where we are. To being with the collective trauma that is surfacing. To leaning into the catastrophic nature of this moment.

So, more recently, I’ve been sitting with the news. I’m watching highlights—not spending too much time on it—just so I can be with it. 

I used to tell friends whose family members were going through something challenging that we can't always fix it for someone else. All we can do is be with them in it.

That’s all we can do right now, isn’t it? Be with each other in community in this moment we are in?

I heard someone say on a podcast this week that if listening to or watching the news doesn't break your heart now and then, there is something wrong.

We seem to have pushed our planet further than it will go and still rebound. Many of us are longing for times when life was simpler: When we didn’t have our noses stuck to our phones. When people were less busy. When we didn’t have AI making plans around us. When we were getting along better.

(Actually, we probably weren’t getting along better. We just rested in the illusion that we were.)

I know that avoiding the news was sticking my head in the sand. It was putting up an artificial barrier, an invisible wall between me and what is in the world at the moment. It was more about me leaning away than leaning toward. 

What might you need to turn to—rather than away from?

What part of our collective trauma might you lean into right now? 

There’s still time for us to make some things better. There’s time to do our part. There’s time for activism. 

And if nothing else, we must lean into where we are together in this moment in the world. 

Nicholas Janni, a brilliant speaker and coach, says that the purpose of coaching is to restore movement. He says that, “The more we are one with what is happening, the more movement that occurs.”

I love that idea. I have seen it. When we be with something that is happening, new, magical things can occur.

It may seem paradoxical that we have to lean into divisiveness. Into pain. Into exhaustion. The inequity. The suffering. 

But what if leaning into all of this will help us move further along?