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KEY POINTS

• To become a peacemaker, it is necessary to be connected to one’s own heart.
• This connection to our own heart is created through compassion meditation.
• Tonglen meditation, a Tibetan form of compassion meditation, builds on the awareness of all our interconnectedness.
• There are five easy practices to follow that help us become peacemakers.

Source: Kits Pix/Shutterstock

Since returning home from four weeks of a silent mindfulness retreat without access to WiFi or news sources and taking a break from a busy practice as a clinical psychologist, I have been feeling raw and overwhelmed by the pain and suffering in this world. The invasion of Ukraine started just before I began my retreat on Feb. 27. During the retreat, the locus of my awareness sank from my thinking mind, my pre-frontal cortex, to my heart. It seems to me that wisdom and compassion arise from the heart, allowing a person to engage as a peacemaker with this wounded world.

To become a peacemaker, a person first needs to build peace within their hearts—that mysterious organ of physiological, psychological, and spiritual perception and connection. A year after the start of World War II, author Henry Miller wrote in a quiet moment while visiting Epidaurus, “What rules the world is the heart, not the brain.” He continued, “In Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.”

From my experience in this exquisitely silent retreat month, I can deeply relate to these sentiments. I took time to explore what it means to be aware and to be human. Modern culture often divides awareness from feeling, with awareness regarded as something that has only to do with attention and thinking. However, awareness has a profoundly feeling, relational quality. We might call this the heart’s intelligence. Rumi talks about the heart’s intelligence when he says, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” The heart feels the whole, while the conceptual mind usually analyzes and takes it apart. Love or compassion arises when awareness and its feeling quality are fused.

There are five steps that help prepare a person to become a peacemaker capable of healing personal and societal wounds:

1. Recognize that peace, deep peace, is possible.
2. Listen deeply to the other side, especially when others’ opinions differ from your own.
3. Set an intention for practice, which means setting aside time to stay connected to our hearts and the great heart of the world.
4. Recognize interdependence and our part in the order of things; then we know that we all are kin, we are all family.
5. Engage from a place of compassion and wisdom.

While on retreat, I found it was important to practice Tonglen, one of the forms of meditation I describe in my book, Heart Medicine: How to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom—at Last. Tonglen, or “giving and receiving,” opens the heart and allows mental and emotional barriers to soften and eventually dissolve. In Tonglen meditation, one takes in the sorrows of others and gives blessings back to them in return. This practice may seem counterintuitive. One may wonder whether it is harmful to receive the darkness of others and risk depleting one’s own stores of goodness. The most important aspect of Tonglen meditation is the understanding that everyone is joining in the interdependent web of life. When a person accepts that every aspect is interconnected, not isolated or separate, then the personal heart, which is interconnected with the great heart of the world, can fearlessly take in that suffering, and surrender it to the great heart of loving awareness. From that wide and inclusive space, it is possible to share care and compassion in a loving way.

Usually, one leaps into action, usually with good intentions, before settling into the heart. But when one takes the time to practice heartfulness, or heart awareness, then every contribution will come from a qualitatively much higher place. The place of engagement can be abstract or practical, in fact, it can have innumerable forms. The Dalai Lama said, “I can trust my heart’s intentions.” When intentions and engagements come from the place where “our little hearts beat in unison with the big heart of the world,” then a person can trust themselves. With faith in one’s heart’s intentions, it is possible to become a peacemaker.

Reference from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/heart-medicine-changing-world/202204/how-become-peacemaker

An ongoing coronavirus outbreak that started in Wuhan, China in December and has since sickened more than 20,000 people across the globe has raised plenty of questions: How long will the outbreak last? Can it be contained? Will scientists find a treatment?

These questions don’t yet have clear answers, making them difficult for even adults to wrap their minds around. That uncertainty, in turn, leaves many parents nervously wondering what they are supposed to tell their kids.

Molly Gardner, a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, has some simple advice: Stay informed, keep perspective and be honest.

Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter by clicking on this link, and please send any tips, leads, and stories to virus@time.com.

“Kids’ emotions feed off of parents’ emotions,” Gardner says. For that reason, it’s important that adults stay up-to-date on the news, so they can answer kids’ questions to the extent possible, but avoid falling into a pit of anxiety about the outbreak.

“Being informed and being anxious are two different things,” Gardner adds.

Parents should also tailor their approach depending on their child’s age, information processing style and exposure to news about the virus, says Ellen Braaten,co-director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital. “You have to know your child,” she says. “Does more information help them cope, or does more information make them anxious?”

Adolescents, who have likely been exposed to information about the outbreak online or at school, can probably handle a frank discussion, Braaten says. She suggests asking them what they think about the outbreak or if they’re worried about anything in particular, then sharing your own thoughts about the situation.

For younger kids, Braaten suggests listening more than you talk. “Find out what it is they’re fearful of and what they already know about it,” she says. Try to answer any specific questions they have, even if those questions feel uncomfortable.

“It’s okay to use words like death and dying,” Gardner says. “The more we beat around the bush with kids, the more they might get confused.” (That said, Gardner says it’s probably smart to turn off the news — which could contain scary images — when young children are around.)

It can be helpful to put things in perspective for a child by explaining that it’s unlikely they or anyone they know in the U.S. will get sick, but Gardner urges parents to avoid over-promising, given all the unknowns about the outbreak. “Just say, ‘We’re going to do everything we can to stay healthy. We’re going to keep informed, and if we have other questions we don’t know the answer to, let’s go talk to your doctor about that,’” she suggests.

It can also be comforting to reiterate that doctors around the world are working to find solutions and care for people who are already sick, Braaten says.

But perhaps the most useful approach for kids of any age, Braaten says, is reminding them of things that are in their power, like washing their hands and covering their sneezes and coughs to avoid getting and spreading illnesses of all kinds. “Knowing there’s something we can do makes us feel less powerless,” she says.

Even after following all of this advice, parents may notice that their kids are worried or anxious about coronavirus. That’s a perfectly normal reaction, Braaten says — adults should just keep an eye on it. If kids are worried to the point of struggling to sleep or being afraid to go to school for days on end, for example, it may be time to call a mental health provider for extra help.MORE MUST-READ STORIES FROM TIME

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Reference from: https://time.com/5776857/how-to-talk-to-kids-coronavirus

At Delta Air Lines’ Atlanta headquarters in late January, 24 employees are arguing over which of them has the worst disease. Half of them had been given cards naming a physical or mental health diagnosis and were told to line up, from the least debilitating to the most.

The woman holding “gingivitis” quickly takes a place at the far left of the line. But everyone further down to the right—low back pain, moderate depression, paraplegia, severe PTSD—keeps switching spots.

“Severe vision loss,” someone says to the man holding the corresponding card, “are you a pilot?” He doesn’t know. There is no further information: not what the person does for a living, whether their condition is well managed, or if they have health care coverage.

“We’re in a pickle down here,” a woman pleads to the instructor, Rochele Burnette, who’s standing by, silent and smiling. Burnette waits until someone finally suggests the right answer: they should be in a vertical line, not a horizontal one. “How we look at a mental disorder and how we look at a physical condition should be the same,” Burnette says. “One could be just as debilitating as the other.”

This is the first lesson of Mental Health First Aid at Work, a training that the National Council for Behavioral Health provides, for a cost, to a growing number of corporations. Of the people taking today’s class, some were there because they had seen firsthand how much a mental health crisis can impact the workplace. A Delta employee killed himself several months ago, and counselors were brought in to help the many people who were affected. Others wanted to improve their mental-health vocabulary, and their confidence in handling related issues. “When someone says, ‘Hi, do you have a minute?’ we never really know what’s going to follow,” one HR employee says in the class. “Sometimes it’s very easy, and sometimes we quickly find ourselves in uncomfortable situations.”

Over the next four hours, the Delta employees learn how to spot symptoms and warning signs of possible mental health concerns in a colleague, reach out and offer initial help, then guide them to professional help and the resources the company offers, like short-term counseling through the free employee assistance program (EAP) and a confidential app that lets you chat immediately with behavioral health coaches. Getting the words right can be tricky; much of the class is devoted to figuring out what to say to a coworker in distress. On everybody’s desk is a handout of helpful and harmful phrases. “One of the things you’ll see on your card is How are you doing, really?” says Burnette. “That ‘really’ really pulls out something extra.” In the potentially harmful category: putting off the conversation until later in the week, suggesting they simply work it out with their manager, or telling them to “just hang in there.”

The office may seem an unlikely place for such a class, but Burnette reminds her students that the historical norm to keep your personal life at home is unrealistic. “What affects you in your life affects you in your work,” she tells the group.

There are no requirements that U.S. employers provide mental health training. But as mental illness diagnoses and suicide rates rise in the U.S., while the stigma of talking about them drops, companies are finding that their employees want a bigger focus on mental health at work. “A little over a year ago, we really started to hear more and more from employees about the need for these kinds of services,” says Rob Kight, senior vice president of human resources at Delta. “It caused us to take a deep look at what we were providing. And we decided, you know, it’s not enough.”

Prioritizing employees’ mental health has become not just a moral issue, but also a tool to recruit and retain young talent. A 2019 poll by the American Psychiatric Association found that millennials—who now comprise the largest generation in the U.S. workforce—tend to be more comfortable than their older peers discussing their mental health at work. Investing in this area may also make financial sense, since untreated mental illness and substance abuse issues can be costly for employers. Untreated depression alone costs the average 1,000-person U.S. company more than $1.4 million per year due to missed days and lost productivity, according to the Center for Workplace Mental Health at the American Psychiatric Association Foundation.

Corporate trainings have emerged as popular solutions, and Mental Health First Aid at Work is among the most widely used. Mental Health First Aid started in 2000 in Australia as a way to educate people about what to do when they encounter someone experiencing mental health problems, which are much more common than the emergencies traditional first aid courses teach. It later spread to 27 countries, each with their own licensing organizations. In the U.S., the National Council for Behavioral Health runs the program, and in 2013 it launched a version tailored for the workplace. More than 200 companies—including Bank of America, Gillette, Starbucks and Unilever—have offered one or both of its four- and eight-hour training programs to employees, says Betsy Schwartz, vice president for public education and strategic initiatives at the National Council for Behavioral Health.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in corporate interest,” Schwartz says. “In companies that train a larger number of employees, we get feedback about a whole culture shift.” Though there hasn’t been much research on the work-specific training, some studies have found that Mental Health First Aid improves knowledge about mental health, and confidence in responding to related issues, for the people who take it. The benefits to the person receiving help from a person who’s gone through the training, however, are not clear.

The number of organizations that run this type of training is growing. The Center for Workplace Mental Health at the American Psychiatric Association Foundation is developing a digital training for managers called “Notice. Talk. Act. at Work,” which teaches the early warning signs of mental health issues and how to have empathetic, compassionate conversations. “We cannot talk about mental health enough in the workplace,” says Darcy Gruttadaro, director of the Center for Workplace Mental Health. “We have a long way to go—the more we can reinforce it, the better.” Some companies have developed their own programs. The consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton trained all employees in 2018 and 2019 to spot the five signs of emotional suffering—depression, in other words. The professional services firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young) offers digital training to help employees recognize the signs that a colleague is struggling and connect them to company resources.

Merely offering services and resources isn’t always enough. Employees have to know about and trust them. Most large companies have a free EAP, for example, which typically offers short-term counseling sessions and other wellbeing services for employees and their family members through outside providers. But even when people are aware that their company has an EAP, they often fear their HR department is monitoring who uses the programs, and that doing so could be a black mark on their employment record. As a result, many studies show that EAPs have historically been underused. “There shouldn’t be, but there is a stigma around this that exists in our country,” says Kight. “We have to help break that down and let people know that it’s okay to take advantage of these services.”

Soon, the two dozen Delta employees in today’s training will join the more than 600 who have completed Mental Health First Aid at Work since the airline started offering it in 2019. Though it’s not mandatory, the goal is for all 90,000 employees to take it, according to Delta’s HR team.

After Burnette gives the students a lesson in what to do if a coworker is having a panic attack, she ends on a hopeful note: proven ways a person can help themselves feel better. Exercise is one, and so are sleep, relaxation and 12-step programs. “But let me tell you something about this one right here,” she says, pointing to a slide on family, friends, faith and other social networks. “When you know you have people you can talk to that are nonjudgmental—I can go to you and have the conversation, and no matter what, you’ll listen—people have had better outcomes, because they have support.”

“I want to speak to that, because I’ve been thinking about how I can articulate this,” says a young man sitting in the front row. “Very early on in life, I found myself trying to remove stigma around mental health and talk about it, because I saw it in my family. It made me say to myself, I don’t want this to happen to me, so how can I make it normal? I started to talk to my friends and people that I’m close with. I say, hey guys, let’s get together and have drinks, and talk about what’s really going on.”

There’s no reason why conversations like these can’t happen in the workplace, too, the new thinking goes. “We’ve all grown up thinking certain conversations are professional and certain conversations are not professional,” Burnette says. “We bring our whole selves to work, so why can’t we talk about our whole self?”MORE MUST-READ STORIES FROM TIME

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Reference from: https://time.com/5783009/first-aid-mental-health

KEY POINTS

• Wonder is a fleeting experience of the world that lets us concretely know how little we know.
• The feeling of wonder directs our attention to the “big-picture” entities in life.
• This type of spiritual sense leads to the motivation to fix things.
• While not without risk, a spiritual sense can make our post-pandemic work lives a renaissance, and not a return to the grind.

Source: Nina Uhlíková/Pexels

Most of us are fairly comfortable with holding on to the expectation that the work we do somehow contributes to our life-long search for meaning. Furthermore, a central piece of the meaning puzzle is the value we place in the interpersonal connections that emerge from our cooperative partnerships, be they in our personal or professional lives.

But equally important to building trusting relationships in meaningful work is the occasional experience of awe-inducing wonder. Unfortunately, the pursuit of wonder tends to be a blind spot in most work settings. This is a mistake, which hampers our ability to maximize happiness and productivity.

What Is Wonder?

Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Rabbi who marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, lamented that with technological advancements and social progress, our collective sense of wonder declines. To motivate a change in course, Heschel asserted, “The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.” I would add that work without wonder is not worth doing.

Researchers identify the experience of a positive feeling of wonder as a response to perceptions that transcend our current frames of reference. In other words, a feeling of wonder emerges when our existing abilities to neatly explain what we are seeing fail us. Wonder is a fleeting experience of the world that lets us concretely know how little we know. It is an indicator that our mental frames have been broken by the new content we are trying to insert. Wonder comes from the recognition that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

Recent research has come to a somewhat unsurprising conclusion: that the feeling of wonder directs our attention to those “big-picture” entities in life. It encourages us to think more about the collective dimensions of our identity, and less about the signifi­cance we tend to attach to personal concerns and goals. While some of us might consider this finding to be rather obvious, it nonetheless brings scienti­fic legitimacy to the traditional understanding that a spiritual sense can be transformative.article continues after advertisement

The experience of wonder changes the way we think about ourselves and our place in the world. This transient sensation shifts our long-term attention to bigger ideas and deeper attachments. It lessens the power of our biases toward greed and sel­fishness. This shift is critical to enabling the type of transformative cooperation required to be happier and more productive in our work.

Source: Wendelin Jacober/Pexels

Fixing What Is Broken

A former Google executive explained to me how wonder plays a critical role in tech culture, and Googlers are encouraged to let their curiosity be the driver of their work. But the thinking that gets them there is as simple as it is profound: Things break, let’s fix them.

This echoes the question Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the charismatic scholar and spiritual leader of one of the largest contemporary Hasidic sects, insisted his followers ask themselves: “Why did this broken thing come into your world?”

A spiritual sense leads to the motivation to fix things. It is hopeful, suggests discontent with the status quo, and encourages resiliency. The feeling of wonder is as important as meaning and connection, even if we don’t always pay attention to it when we experience it.

The key precursor of wonder is perceiving something that messes with our mental frames. It upsets our confi­dence in the systems we rely on for inferring meaning. While not without risk, a spiritual sense can make our post-pandemic work lives a renaissance, and not a return to the grind.

Reference from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/managing-meaning/202204/how-spirituality-increases-happiness-and-productivity