Gratitude in Times of Chaos

Welcome to the Mantalk Show. I'm Connor Beaton, and on this week's midweek mini episode, we're just going to talk a little bit about gratitude in the time of crisis. Thanks. In the time of crisis. So, like many of you may have experienced in the past several months. And by the way, just a quick acknowledgment, my audio may not be as crisp and clean as it normally is today. I don't have my audio equipment with me and so I am just recording on a different device. But as many of you have probably experienced over the past several months, there has been a significant change in life. A lot of people are restricted to who they can spend time with. Many people are restricted to being isolated and feeling alone and have maybe experienced a tremendous amount of loss and grief and isolation, loss financially, loss emotionally, loss maybe of jobs or restrictions around your business and how you're able to conduct that business, restrictions around your relationships. I know many people that they've had to spend a considerable amount of time apart from their partner, stuck in different countries, families that are separated. So there's really, you know, a tremendous amount of stress and fear that a lot of people are facing right now that many, many people are experiencing in our world due to the circumstances that we are living through right now. So how do we have thanks. How do we express gratitude in times of chaos? I was talking about this with a client the other day and said, you know, right now we are living through this very interesting time because in many ways we're living through a time of tremendous fear, just a tremendous amount of fear. You can feel it in the conversations that you have with people. You can observe it and watch it in the mainstream media and narrative and conversation. That's happening. It's showing up in entertainment, it's showing up in news cycles, it's showing up in social media. It's showing up in your conversations with friends and families. There's a lot of division. Many families are broken up because of political conversations or differences, religious differences and conversations. So there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of reason for people to lose out and.

Miss out on the chance for gratitude. And so this brings up the question of how do we have gratitude? How do we stay grateful and thankful in times of chaos, in times of crisis? And this is the beauty of what we are living through right now, is that culturally and systemically, we are living through a time that can in many ways represent a sort of a macrocosm for the microcosm that we experience. Within our lives, right? Many of us go through individually very challenging times, very heavy times of crisis, heavy times of chaos, where maybe we are ill or we lose a job or we have a divorce or a relationship falls apart. And it's in those moments where, for lack of a better term, our faith, in some ways is tested, is challenged. Our faith in ourselves, in love, in humanity, our faith in our abilities and our capacities to earn, to build, to create, our faith in ourselves as artists. So right now is just a collective experience, right? The entire world is sort of going through this challenge of faith in humanity, in our ability as a collective to move through these challenging times. And we are living in the age of crisis. We are living through the literal age of chaos. Right now. There is a narrative warfare happening online, and you can see it very easily. And so it's easy to get lost in the sort of sea of fear. Fear. And I said to the other day, to the alliance, the online group of men that I run, I said, you know, we're sort of living in this, like, fear soup, and everywhere you turn, there's just more fear. And if you're not careful, it can be very easy to go through your day and go through your week and go through your month just consuming copious amounts of fear. And so how do we combat that fear? What do we do with it? Certainly, it's not that we reject it or try and avoid it, because it's just systemically everywhere. It's in the conversations, it's in our partners, it's in our friends. There's just a lot of fear in a lot of people. And so it's not that we try and cut the fear out of our lives or put blinders onto it by, you know, just tuning out to every conversation. It's that we start to slowly build a relationship with the fear that we have within ourselves. We start to build a relationship with the fear that we have about losing a partner or a loved one. We start to cultivate a relationship with the fear that we have about not being able to, you know, maybe make it through this tough time financially or, you know, having our business not make it through this crisis, this chaotic time. And we start to cultivate and sit with and be with that fear. Fear. And we start to find ways to bring gratitude to that. To that fear. We start to bring appreciation for that fear. Because for many of us, it is the rejection of that fear. It's the avoidance of that fear. It is the turning the blind eye and sort of being ignorant to that fear that Causes us tremendous amount of suffering. So in the last several months, I've really been playing around with, how do I be grateful for the fear that I am experiencing? You know, the, the fear of, you know, financially, the fear that shows up, the fear of not knowing, you know, where we're going to live, the fear of uncertainty around when I'll ever be able to run a men's weekend again in person and, and serve people in person and work with people in person, all of that. I, you know, I. I get a tremendous amount of joy from, and purpose and life force and function from. And so there's a fear of, like, man, what if the world never goes back to normal? And it's a bit absurd, but sometimes, you know, that fear is there to serve a purpose. And in many ways. And if you hadn't tuned into this episode, but I had a philosopher on who talked about the philosophy of catastrophe. And I think in many ways fear is somewhat similar. Fear can help us to. It almost is like a reminder of what's meaningful in our lives. And so for me, what I would encourage you to do is look at what fear is telling you about your life right now. In many ways, the things that you are afraid to lose, maybe there is an attachment there that's been unhealthy, that can start to evolve, but also it is a reminder of the things that matter most to you. And so for many, many people, the invitation of this time, the invitation of any period of crisis, any period of chaos, is to start to sharpen and hone and cultivate a deeper relationship with our fear. And when we do that, it brings more transparency, more clarity and more certainty about what matters most to us in our lives. Who are the people that we really want to spend time with? Who are the people that we absolutely want to express ourselves to? Who are the people that we want to build and grow with? What are the situations and circumstances that we would like to create? What do we want to create in the world? What kind of business do we want to be a part of? What type of community do we want to contribute to? How do we want to be of service to others? So being with our fear, the practice of being with our fear and being grateful for that fear when it shows up without needing to avoid it, without needing to become it, without needing to reject it, can actually allow us a greater sense of peace, serenity, calmness, clarity, transparency, meaning, purpose, function, direction. So fear is not to be avoided. It's not to be abolished right now, if anything, and I know this is A little bit contrarian because it's not like you're going to tune into many messages where people are like, you should be grateful for your fear.

But in many ways this is what we are being asked to do collectively right now. There are so many people who are spiraling, who are spinning out and who are lost in this fear soup because they are just consuming it constantly and it is inundating their neurology, their nervous systems, and they're unable to sort of escape from it. And as Carl Jung said, what we cannot separate from, we cannot heal. So we need to create a little bit of space from our fear, to witness it, to be with it, to see it. What are we actually afraid of right now in our lives? What have we been? Frozen? You know, because when we, when fear shows up, our nervous system responds to that fear, fear. And we go into fight flight or freeze mode. And for many of us over the pandemic, we have been frozen, not making the decisions, not doing the things that we need to take care of ourselves, or we've gone into fight mode and we've been really actively, you know, combating the people that we love or the circumstances that are around us. And we're sort of going down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and what might be happening and you know, raging against the, the machine or the man or whatever the case may be. And for some of us, we're fleeing, you know, we are, we are running, we're hiding even more, we're isolating even more. We're, we're, we're, you know, turning inwards even more and hiding and fleeing from the things that we know will support us during this very chaotic and crisis oriented time. So today, what I would love for you to do is to sit with your fears and to journal a little bit. So I just have a couple prompts for you. So number one, what I've been afraid of the past several months is I've been afraid of that. Because how that's made me feel and react is. And if I was a little bit grateful for that fear, what I'd be grateful for about it is, so just be with that fear, be with that gratitude, give thanks for it today and really try and allow yourself to move into a place where fear doesn't consume you, fear doesn't run you, but you can be with that fear and bring a little bit of appreciation, a little bit of gratitude towards it and to see how it starts to clarify your life, what's meaningful to you, what's purposeful to you. So Please share this episode with a couple people. There are a lot of people that are really going through tough times right now, and this might be the message that they need in order to move from survival during this time of crisis and move back into a place of thriving. So until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope that you are all doing well and I give thanks and gratitude and appreciation for all of you for tuning in to this show and to this episode. Thanks very much.