The world feels like it’s on a gnarly bender right now—hungover on outrage, mainlining doomscrolls, and picking fistfights with its own reflection. In moments like these, the most sane, the most rebellious thing you can do isn’t to scream louder. It’s to stay adult. Not in the “pay your taxes and buy beige chinos” sense, but in the “hold your ground while the circus burns” sense.
These eight principles are about keeping your nervous system from joining the mosh pit. They’re about showing up with presence instead of panic, wisdom instead of whiplash.
But here’s the twist: every one of these principles has a shadow truth. The opposite is also true. Sometimes fury matters more than calm, sometimes high expectations change the world, sometimes seriousness trumps humor. The challenge of our moment is in holding both truths in your hand without losing your balance.
1. First Regulate, Then Respond
Your first thought in chaos is rarely your best thought. “First thought, best thought” works for poetry slams and late bohemian wellness seminars. But in real life? That first thought is usually your amygdala in a trench coat trying to pass as reason.
So before you clap back, post, or rage-text your senator: breathe. Three slow ones. Reset the meat-computer. Because when you’re hijacked by fear or fury, you’ve basically turned over the wheel to a caffeinated raccoon inside your skull. And that little bastard is not qualified to make policy decisions. And certainly not going to serve your serenity.
To be sure, this isn’t passivity. This is power conservation. Regulate first, respond second. The world doesn’t need more panic. It needs fewer raccoons driving cars.
Shadow truth: And yet—sometimes fury is the only fuel. History’s turning points weren’t written by people who paused for three deep breaths. Sometimes the raccoon is right.
2. Expand Your Sense of What’s Possible
Dark times make tunnel vision look like a lifestyle choice. But possibility hasn’t evaporated. It’s just hiding behind the headlines. There are still people planting forests, making positive change, and hosting potlucks where neighbors who disagree on cable news somehow pass the mashed potatoes without violence.
Hope isn’t a couch cushion lottery ticket. It’s a crowbar. It’s the thing you swing at locked doors. Keep your eyes on what’s breaking through, not just what’s breaking down.
Shadow truth: But for many, hope feels like a luxury. To ask the drowning to imagine crowbars is to miss the immediacy of their survival. Sometimes tunnel vision isn’t weakness—it’s necessity.
3. Focus Energy on Your Sphere of Influence
You can’t fix everything. You’re not a Marvel superhero. You don’t have to be.
Can’t solve geopolitics? Cool. Show up at your school board. Can’t stop climate change solo? Fine. Reduce your footprint where you can and support the folks actually building solutions. Can’t end all injustice? Okay—but maybe you can join a local rally, and make sure your people and neighbors are doing ok.
Rage-scrolling at midnight won’t save the republic. But doing the next right thing in your sphere of influence just might.
Shadow truth: But scale matters. The biggest fires aren’t put out by buckets in the backyard. Sometimes your sphere of influence has to stretch until it hurts.
4. Hold Realistic Expectations
“Expect no more of anyone than you yourself can deliver.” That means stop fantasizing that your uncle is going to wake up enlightened at Thanksgiving, or that your coworkers are going to become models of compassion just because you read them a zinger Brené Brown quote.
If you’re tired, confused, flailing—guess what? So is everyone else. Lower the bar. Set boundaries. Save yourself the resentment hangover that comes from expecting everyone else to be saints while you’re still swearing in traffic.
Shadow truth: And still—without high expectations, progress stalls. Sometimes disappointment is the price of holding others accountable to a standard worth striving for.
5. Tolerate Uncertainty and Complexity
Ambiguity: it’s what’s for dinner. Immigration, climate, the economy: none of this comes in bite-sized, microwave-ready solutions.
Beware the tiktok pundit selling you tidy answers. Reality is messier. And sometimes, shocker: the people you disagree with might actually have a point buried in their outrage. Holding complexity keeps you out of the tribal bonfire where nuance and possibility go to die.
Shadow truth: But some lines are sharp. Slavery, fascism, genocide—these aren’t puzzles to hold with nuance. Sometimes complexity is a shield for cowardice.
6. Maintain Perspective Through Humor
Look, you can either laugh or you can implode. And implosion doesn’t help anybody.
The trick isn’t mocking suffering, it’s mocking your own self-seriousness. It’s catching yourself about to tweet the 47th righteous thread of the day and instead stepping back like, “Wow, I’m one step away from becoming the town crier in a medieval plague.”
Humor is oxygen. Take a dose before you suffocate on your own virtue.
Shadow truth: But laugh too long, and you risk trivializing the blaze. Sometimes the most moral thing is not to crack a joke, but to sit in the gravity without relief.
7. Focus on Principles Over Winning
Are you fighting to be right, or fighting for what’s right? They’re not the same thing.
When debates get heated, zoom out. Ask: what’s the principle here? Dignity? Justice? A livable planet? Keep your flag planted there instead of bayoneting people with facts just to feel clever.
Victories fade. Principles endure.
Shadow truth: But principles without victories are tombstones. If the bad guys keep winning elections, passing laws, seizing power—your noble principles may survive only as footnotes.
8. Practice Radical Self-Care as Revolutionary Act
Forget the spa-day marketing fluff: in dark times, self-care is rebellion. Sleep like your sanity depends on it. Guard your attention like it’s a national treasure. Say no to the vortex of bad news when your nervous system is already frayed.
As the airline prophets remind us: oxygen mask first. Not because you’re selfish, but because unconscious martyrs don’t save anyone. Your grounded nervous system is the best gift you can hand your community.
Shadow truth: But don’t mistake self-care for revolution. Face masks and naps don’t dismantle empires. Sometimes the most caring act is to burn yourself out for something larger than you.
It sort of feels like since 2020 we’ve been living in a strange alternate universe. And it’s just getting weirder by the minute. These principles might get you staying human when the world seems hell-bent on becoming inhuman. They’re about choosing adulthood in a time of collective tantrum.
The most subversive move in the chaos isn’t shouting louder. It’s staying grounded, thoughtful, and absurdly, defiantly alive.
Shadow truth: Or maybe, sometimes, it is shouting louder.