Activist Shelly Tygielski is Reporting from the Front Lines of the Humanitarian Efforts in Ukraine. Here Are 4 Steps All of Us Can Take to Make a Difference Now

I often say I “accidentally” started Pandemic of Love two years ago, a global, grassroots, volunteer-led mutual aid community that has connected more than 2.1 million people and raised over $62 million dollars of aid. Yet earlier this week, as I left for Poland to work on the border of Ukraine and to be part of global team that is administering humanitarian aid on a large-scale, I realized that just like my response to the crisis in Ukraine is not “accidental,” neither was the way I responded to the global pandemic. In fact, my ability to respond to national and global events has been very intentional, mindful, and steeped in love. And what I know for sure is that my specific process of moving to action is both scalable and replicable.

In times of crisis, when we find ourselves in deep despair, we tend to look outward to find somebody who is doing something about the state of the world. I used to be that person who looked around for somebody until one day, I finally realized that I, too, was somebody.

My plea to you today is this: In times of despair, fear, and tragedy, first turn inward. In doing so, you will be able to access your pain and angst and channel it into concrete action, showing up more fully and more impactfully than you would have if you skipped over the inner work.

So, how do we do this? How do we turn inward when so much is happening around us? Here’s my best advice:

Step No. 1: Tend to the Area of the Garden You Can Reach

One of my favorite Buddhist proverbs is that each of us should “tend to the area of the garden that you can reach.” Our “garden” may seem like a small plot—an insignificant blip on the radar in the grander world. Yet what we tend to forget is that when we plant good seeds, we can make sure that everyone in our “garden” has enough—and that often is enough to start healing what’s broken.

Step No. 2: Remember “Enough” is a Feast.

My central mantra, which has informed all of my work and ultimately influenced the creation of Pandemic of Love is simply this: “Enough is a feast.” If we can make sure that everyone in our garden is taken care of, this is part of what can give us meaning and cultivate our own well-being. The catch—and what I’ve learned through mistakes and foibles!—is that it’s crucial to tend to each individual as a joyful or calm person, which yields very different results than responding from a place of anger, guilt, fear, or despair. There is a clear and tangible way to create this shift, which starts with the inner work and then connects to the outer world.

Step No. 3: Evolve Beyond Fight, Flight, Fear Mode

When the world around us is rocked in some way, creating confusion and instability, the last thing we think would be useful is to do nothing. Yet doing nothing is often exactly what we need to do. Sitting in silence, whether in a formal meditation practice or an informal practice of “boredom,” helps create a clearing in a dense forest of thoughts. When we get quiet, the things we need to hear have the opportunity to get really loud. Thus, if we sit with the explicit purpose of listening—to our busy minds, to our busy hearts, to our physical bodies—we have the ability to answer some fundamental questions such as:

What am I feeling emotionally?

Where does it hurt?

Where do I feel it most in my body?

We should allow the answers to arise like waves coming ashore and let them wash over us, without attaching to them or judging them. When I personally do this practice, there is no self-flagellation or shame; there tends to just be a flood of unprocessed emotions. As they arise, I notice and label them. Once I recognize and allow what I am feeling and where I am feeling it, I tend to the most tender spaces by nurturing myself with gentle phrases, reminding myself to breathe through the fear. I slowly begin to accept that what I am experiencing now is the current reality (albeit even temporarily), and that the current coordinates will serve as a baseline. After several days of consistent practice, even at 10-minute intervals a few times a day, I find that I am ready to move to a different set of questions:

What can I tangibly do about what I am feeling right now?

And how do I come from a place of love?

These two questions help me move from the completely normal, biological response humans have evolutionarily been conditioned to react with (read: “fight, flight, freeze”) to a different response, something I call “empathy-action” mode (also scientifically referred to as “tend and befriend”). I find that I become capable of channeling my identified emotions (namely fear and despair in times of crisis) by writing down a tangible list that details exactly what I am afraid of and distraught over—and what I can do to help.

Step No. 4: Trust Your Ripples of Influence

Every movement I’ve ever started, regardless of how quickly it scaled or how large it became, started with my understanding that I need to turn inward first, and that I need to move to action from a place of love. The impetus that moves me to action always starts with concern for those that are closest to me—the area of the garden that I can reach. I, like you, am just one person who has the capacity to throw a pebble into a pond that creates a ripple. If enough of us throw the pebbles into the pond, that ripple can become a wave—the wave of change.