Hasta La Gadget!

The smell of fresh paint wafted about late last week as a panel convened to interrogate the worlds of art and activism. Recently situated in a new location near Union Square, the Goethe Institut hosted an event Thursday, March 26, “Truth is Concrete,” that began and ended with a call to action led by popular reverend Bill Talen, who made a name for himself and the social justice movement by leading the Stop Shopping Choir to fight a machine whose operating system Talen, Savitri D, Taja Cheek, Noah Fischer, Gregory Sholette, and Raquel de Anda deconstructed. Nato Thompson moderated their discussion, one led by Florian Malzacher, whose new book Truth Is Concrete: A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics explores various ways of merging the symbiotically connected need for art in activism and activism in art.

From Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, and the Kiev Maidan and Syntagma Square in Athens, the Goethe Institut press release proclaimed, artists have been at the forefront of all these and are now taking stock, exploring the dynamic between art and politics. Savitri D did not want to waste any time with theorizing. The problem is not that people do not know. “There’s a tyranny of information,” she said. “It is imperative to be activist,” adding that art and activism are on parallel tracks. Borrowing the phrase “art is hard,” Savitri said, “yes, and activism is harder.” She stressed the need for “creative resistance” to forces such as extractive industries — oil and gas, among many others — and the machine in general, pointing to the successes and shortcomings of the #Occupy and #BlackLivesMatter movements as touchstones for what art-activism can and should do. Savitri spoke of being liberated from categories and careerism, and that what matters more than how for activists is who, that is with whom activists work to make change. The difference between Occupy and Black Lives Matter, for Savitri, is the former was about “communities becoming radicalized” and the latter about “radicals seeking community.”

“Is our species in a state of shock?” Rev. Talen asked. “We kill the people who hear the Earth, we murder them,” he said. Talen accused the “predators trapped behind desks, wheels, and guns” of overwhelming “the talk of Earth” under an inundation of a “sea of overlapping apocalypses.” Talen, charismatic and animated, punctuated nearly every line with a plaintive “amen?” to which the crowd responded, “Amen!”

Taja Cheek, who has been working with the “rightful owners” of the famous Slave Theater and helped create a space in Chelsea called Nola Darling, emphasized the need for solidarity among artists of color and among artists generally. Cheek also brought up Kara Walker’s recent installation at the former site of the Domino sugar factory as a focal point where people met, took off their disguises of “strangerdom,” and told people why they were there. Her work, she said, has taken her to a lot of “weird underground PoC” outlets on the internet. Cheek describes herself as a “Black Weirdo,” explaining that the “whole point of declaring my separation from mainstream America and its trite stereotypes of blackness is to normalize and legitimize that ostensible strangeness.”

Noah Fischer has been working to expose the exploitative labor conditions that the Guggenheim has undertaken building its museum in Abu Dhabi, and is a strategist and organizer of direct actions on the topic of debt. Alluding to the title of the book and event, for him “politics are concrete rather than ambiguous.” Fischer focuses on museums because they are institutions he seeks to use as a way of leveraging issues like control of public space. He spoke of the difficulty for artists to collaborate on principle of solidarity in the face of “neoliberal capitalism,” and expanded on what he meant by “existential debt” in an email, explaining that it refers to “debt that can never be repaid, debt that is greater that one’s lifespan, one’s existence.”

Fischer added that artists, who “are likely to find ourselves saddled with existential debt because art schools are among the most expensive educations,” are compelled to “aim your projects toward market capitalization and avoid political positions that won’t ingratiate you with those with money and prestige.” There is a bright side: “Existential debts could prove to be a mechanism for solidarity. Since you are saddled with debt for life, there is little to lose to strike or stop believing in your debt.” During the talk, he mentioned the Rolling Jubilee, “only a window into a system” but a very important one, nonetheless — millions of dollars in debt erased, out of trillions.

Raquel de Anda spoke about the burgeoning climate arts movement, asking for a show of hands who attended the People’s Climate March last September. “We live in an image-saturated culture,” Anda said, connecting racial and social justice to climate. Anda hates the word “expert,” as it summons up a hierarchy of knowledge that excludes the uninitiated and reinforces the power of the elect. What is the intersection between activism and art, anyway? For one thing, art is much more difficult to define. The point of activism is to challenge a prevailing system by mobilizing concerned people to push for social change, and to thereby push for a transmutation of the values and symbols which underly that system. The world of art either reifies or subverts those symbols and values.

“Whatever mechanism is in charge of making the switch is not making the switch,” Thompson told me after the discussion. “Everyone knows everything is going wrong, but nothing is changing,” he said. The problem is the way power is understood does not match up with how it actually works, Thompson said. “How do you shift the fucking gear?”

Having assessed in the last three posts the impacts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the last five years, we have seen that the ACA will not bring universal access, contain health care costs for patients and taxpayers, or improve the quality of care.

These are some of the main lessons we have already learned from the ACA’s initial five years.

1. Health care “reform” through the ACA was framed and hijacked by corporate stakeholders, themselves in large part responsible for our system problems of health care.

Although deregulated markets in our medical-industrial complex were largely responsible for problems of access, costs and quality of health care for many years, policy makers and framers were unwilling to confront corporate stakeholders of the existing system where the business “ethic” prevails. Thus the interests of insurers, the drug and medical device industries, hospitals and organized medicine took precedence over the needs of patients throughout the political process. By the time the ACA was enacted, some 1,750 organizations and businesses had hired about 4,525 lobbyists, eight for every member of Congress, at a cost of $1.2 billion, to get the kind of legislation they wanted. (1) Drafters of the ACA often had conflicts of interest; Elizabeth Fowler, for example, as the lead author of the Senate Finance Committee’s bill, had served as vice president for public policy for Wellpoint, the country’s second largest insurer. (2)

2. We can’t contain health care costs by letting for-profit health care industries pursue their business “ethic” in a deregulated marketplace.

All of the corporate stakeholders in health care have seen a bonanza of profits through new subsidized markets with no significant price controls. Health insurer stocks have soared, as illustrated by UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer, which saw its share price rise from $30.40 in March 2010, to $113.85 this month, a 375 percent increase. The other five of the six top insurers more than doubled or tripled their stock value. (3) The ACA has rewarded hospitals with several million more paying customers through the individual mandate and Medicaid expansion as they merge and consolidate with larger market shares. All this has led to higher prices. As one example, charges for medical procedures rose four times faster than the rate of inflation in 2012. (4)

3. We can’t reform the delivery system without reforming the financing system.

Drafters of the ACA never questioned the multi-payer financing system which is a big part of our problems. Ignoring the experience of most other advanced countries, they kept not-for-profit, single-payer public financing off the table. Private insurers have successfully avoided costlier, sicker patients for many years. While the ACA sets some limits on this behavior, the industry has found new ways to continue to game the new system for their business interests, as we shall see in our next post. Today, the “partnership” is still close between government and the private insurance industry. They both need each other — the Obama administration, which counts on private insurers to participate in expanding their markets, and insurers, who welcome nearly $2 trillion in subsidies expected over the next ten years. (5)

4. It is futile to embark on unproven and untested incremental tweaks to our present system while ignoring health policy and experience around the world.

As we have seen in recent posts, the ACA embarked on various new initiatives that were either untested or had failed in earlier years, including increased cost-sharing with patients, changes in payment policies, accountable care organizations, and further privatization. All of those initiatives ignored the role of the deregulated marketplace in perpetuating our access, cost and quality system problems.

5. In order to have the most efficient insurance coverage, we need the largest possible risk pool to spread the risk and avoid adverse selection.

It is well known that the larger and more diverse the risk pool is, the more efficient and affordable insurance can be. About 20 percent of the population accounts for 80 percent of all health care spending. But the ACA has opted to leave some 1,300 private insurers in place, with continued increased fragmentation of risk pools. Risk pools under the ACA are made smaller by many young people not signing up through the exchanges, one-third of middle-aged men opting to stay uninsured (6), and many exemptions to the individual mandate given by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

6. The ACA has been much more disruptive to our system than a simplified single payer alternative would have been.

The key question that was never asked or answered by the framers and promoters of the ACA was who is the system for — corporate interests or patients? Instead of minimizing disruption by corporate stakeholders, the ACA brings us increased disruption for patients: a more confusing and unstable system, more discontinuity of insurance coverage, disruption of many doctor-patient relationships, less choice of hospitals and physicians through narrowed (and changing) networks, and more uncertainty. As one example of how ineffective accountable care organizations (ACOs) have been, a recent study found that two-thirds of office visits to specialists were provided outside of assigned ACOs, especially for higher-cost patients with more office visits and chronic conditions. (7)

7. We can’t trust many states to assure an adequate safety net for the uninsured and underinsured.

Red states and those that have opted out of Medicaid expansion give us no confidence that they will assure that the uninsured and underinsured will receive sufficient essential health care. Many states are cutting already low Medicaid reimbursement, with the result that more physicians will not accept new Medicaid patients. (8) The ACA gives states wide latitude to determine what “adequate access to covered services” is. Churning in coverage will continue — a 2014 study found that 40 percent of adults likely to enroll in Medicaid or subsidized marketplace coverage will have a change of eligibility within 12 months. (9) And at the national level, the GOP is targeting big cuts in Medicaid and food stamps. (10)

Can this trajectory be changed going forward? Based on the lessons above, the answer has to be “No,” though many supporters are not yet prepared to acknowledge this. It is unfortunate that we will have to see ongoing profiteering and administrative waste at patients’ and taxpayers’ expense before we can get health care right in this country. Our next blog will address one of the main culprits perpetuating our dysfunctional health care system — the private insurance industry itself.

References:
1. Center for Public Integrity, as cited by Moyers, B, Winship, M. The unbearable lightness of reform. Truthout, March 27, 2010.

2. Connor, K. Chief health aide to Baucus is former Wellpoint executive. Eyes on the Ties blog, September 1, 2009.

3. Potter, W. Health insurers’ stock soars as they dump small business customers. The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2015.

4. O’Leary, W. On the road to corporate health care. The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2015.

5. Pear, R. Health law turns Obama and insurers into Allies. New York Times, November 17, 2014.

6. Flavelle, C. Obamacare’s dropouts are middle-age men. Bloomberg News, March 17, 2014.

7. McWilliams, JM, Chernew, ME, Dalton, JB et al. Outpatient care patterns and organizational accountability in Medicare. JAMA Internal Medicine, April 21, 2014.

8. Pear, R. For many new Medicaid enrollees, care is hard to find, report says. New York Times, September 14, 2014.

9. Summers, BD, Graves, JA, Swartz, K et al. Medicaid and marketplace eligibility changes will occur often in all states; policy options can ease impact. Health Affairs 33 (4): 700-707, April 2014.

10. Peterson, K. GOP targets Medicaid, food stamps. Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2015: A 5.

Adapted in part from my new book, How Obamacare Is Unsustainable: Why We Need a Single Payer Solution for All Americans.
Buy a copy from Amazon.com

“Stress” seems to be an epidemic right now — emails to answer, activities to attend, houses to clean, groceries to buy, jobs to do… the pressure seems never-ending.

But here’s what you need to know:

Stress may be a given in our lives…
but being stressed out doesn’t have to be.

What Non-Stressed-Out People Know

1. They know stress is a normal and expected part of life

No one gets a “Get out of Stress Free” card in this game.

In fact, we need a healthy amount of nervous system activation to get through our days — working and parenting and all the other important things we do require our energy and engagement. You know that list that ranks all the stressful life experiences that people can encounter? There are bad things on that list, like the loss of a job or the death of a loved one. But there are also good things on the list, like getting married, buying a house, and having kids.

Change is constant, and change often creates stress.

Non-stressed-out people know this. They know stress will show up in their lives, so they’re less likely to be knocked down when it does.

2. They understand that what makes us stressed out is how we perceive the stressor

Stress researchers Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman at UC-Berkeley have defined stress as, “a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being” (from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living).

This definition of stress clearly indicates that stress is about our relationship to events and our perceptions of them. If you view a particular event as a threat (to your physical, emotional, or social well-being), then you’ll likely experience it as stressful. If you choose to reframe the event, perhaps as an opportunity, then it may not be stressful at all.

Non-stressed-out people know to take a deep breath, and assess the situation. They try to see it like a camera would, noticing what is actually happening, instead of rashly interpreting the event from their limited perspective. And in that short period of time, a whole world of options open up.

3. They know when they are stressed

Has this ever happened to you? You get home from work, make dinner, start getting the kids ready for bed… and then a small infraction by your child sets off a wildly disproportionate reaction from you.

You were probably stressed out all day, and didn’t even know it. We often spend our days in a state of low-grade fight-or-flight arousal, and then even the slightest stressor can set us off.

Non-stressed-out people are in tune with their bodies. They notice the tense shoulders, the furrowed brow, the tightening chest, or whatever their stress signals are, and then act (see below) to defuse the stress energy before it explodes.

4. They know they have power and choice

Resilient people have a sense of efficacy. They know they have a choice in how they respond. Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, “They view life as a challenge… and assume an active role in [it].”

They understand the serenity prayer — they know they can change the things they control, and they choose to live in wise relationship with the things they cannot.

5. They have a sense of meaning

Non-stressed-out people know the why behind their actions. They act with purpose and intention. Even the most mundane task can have meaning — for example, cleaning our home is a way of honoring our surroundings.

And when things go wrong, Non-stressed-out people find meaning in that, too.

“What we think are our failures are not failures. They are gifts — revealing extremely useful information — if we are open to being mindful of everything that unfolds in our lives, in a day, or in a moment, and putting it all to good use as grist for the mill.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

What Non-Stressed-Out People Do

1. They practice mindfulness

With mindfulness, we learn to pause. We learn to see things as they actually are. We learn to drop the story, which only exacerbates the stress, and choose wise action.

The practice of mindfulness is what allows us to notice and experience the buildup of stress, instead of suppressing it. When we ignore and internalize stress, it never gets released.

Think of the zebra in the wild, who gets startled by a lion, and bolts away in a flight response. Once he’s safe, the stress has been released from his body, and he calms down and takes a nap. He doesn’t worry about what might have happened had his offspring had been eaten, or agonize over when the lion will return. (See Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers).

If we ignore our stress, it builds up and we never return to a calm baseline. Mindfulness gives us a basic awareness of our stress. And then we can develop healthy restorative practices.

“Under duress we don’t rise to our expectations, we fall to our level of training.” — Bruce Lee

So resilient people train.

2. They exercise

Exercise releases feel-good hormones and a bunch of other chemicals that promote resilience and well-being.

3. They get adequate sleep

How clear-headed are you without good sleep? It probably goes without saying that we’re much more likely to resort to habitual reactions when we’re tired. Jon Kabat-Zinn says that resilient people build up a “bank account” that they can draw upon during tough times. Sleep, exercise, healthy food, and meditation are the most important deposits we can make!

4. They make time for relationships and intimacy

We are social beings. Simply sharing our frustrations and talking about what’s bothering us can relieve a great deal of our stress.

5. They put themselves in timeout

Non-stressed-out people make time for themselves. They nurture the hobbies that fulfill them and give their minds a break from day-to-day busy-ness. They go for a walk or read a good book or savor a delicious meal. They know that

self-care is not selfish.

They do the things that feed their bodies, hearts, and minds. Janice Marturano, in Finding the Space to Lead, writes, “Such moments — when we fully inhabit our bodies and our senses are at work on more than an internal storyline, checklist, or rehearsed conversation — are what give life true meaning.”

*****

Stress may be a given, but being stressed out doesn’t have to be!

This post first appeared on Sarah’s blog Left Brain Buddha. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

photo credit: Meditation via photopin (license)

The Financial Times recently weighed in on the issue of fossil fuel divestment, arguing that divestment is “largely irrelevant to the ultimate objective of minimizing the threat of climate change.” It’s a common argument: that we can be certain that divesting won’t affect anything. It’s a favorite of industry-funded counterattacks and intransigent universities. The problem is that it’s not a good argument. It’s not based on reason, and it’s not based on evidence.

Now, when we talk about the future, we are reduced to possibility and likelihood. That does not mean, however, that we may throw reason and evidence out the window. On the contrary, we need them more than ever when we attempt to read the tea leaves, and especially so when we try to convince others that our reading is a good one. This is one area where financial professionals, scientists and others who rely on demonstrable evidence can agree: The eye of the beholder can provide a vision of the future, but at the end of the day, the best proof is in the pudding.

When it comes to determining the ultimate effects of the act of divestment and the movement that surrounds it, the proof in the pudding will be a matter for history, probably decades hence. Anyone who claims to know with certainty that divestment won’t have any future impact is being dishonest, intentionally or unintentionally. Likewise, the specific knock-on effects of divestment promoted by its supporters cannot be predicted with a high level of exactness. So, we must use reasoned judgment and the evidence available to us so far in determining divestment’s potential utility.

Using reasoned judgment alone, there are at least three reasons why we can expect the act of divestment to be useful, perhaps extremely so, for the ultimate objective of minimizing the threat of climate change.

The first reason we can expect divestment to be useful is institutional. We can expect divestment to generate new and additional incentives, rather than countervailing incentives, for institutions to adopt policies designed to minimize the threat of climate change. These incentives derive from a need to remain consistent with a divestment stance once it is adopted, and we can expect these incentives to operate both within and between institutions. Within institutions, divesting from an industry or activity generates ongoing pressure to dissociate further from that industry or activity within the power of the institution to do so.

For example, the fact that Harvard University is divested from tobacco makes it more difficult, not less difficult, to sell cigarettes on its campus.

Over time, we can expect institutions that divest from fossil fuels to face additional pressure, not less pressure, to reduce their electricity consumption from fossil fuels, to direct their research efforts toward non-fossil energy sources, and so on. Divestment can also generate useful incentives between institutions. For example, if Harvard University were to announce an alignment of its investment policies with the 2-degree Celsius global warming goal, resulting in divestment from coal, oil sands, Arctic oil or other resources that are far out of economic alignment with the 2-degree goal, then it is reasonable to expect that other institutions, including governments, will feel more pressure, not less pressure, to align their investment policies with a 2-degree goal, or to enact other, compensatory policies. Thus, we can expect divestment to generate institutional pressure to align policies with climate goals. This is useful for minimizing the threat of climate change.

The second reason we can expect divestment to be useful is social. For climate policies to be sustained for decades into the future, they must have popular support, especially in democracies like the U.S. This means that people must believe that addressing climate change is both urgent and a moral imperative. We can’t expect self-interested material cost-benefit analyses to provide the motivation needed, because investments to reduce emissions cost real money today, but they will not have discernible effects on the climate for decades to come. This means that policies of principle that set social norms, like divestment, are important. When an institution divests, it is saying that yes, we could obtain short-term returns from these activities, but that would be wrong, so we won’t do it. This is exactly what politicians are being asked to do today and what voters will be required to do for decades to come in order to minimize the threat of climate change.

To enact and sustain policies on climate change, we need these actions of principle to be normalized and to be a part of common values. We can expect divestment, which is a clear and principled action on climate change, to help do that. This effect might be difficult to predict, but it should not be underestimated.

The third reason we can expect divestment to be useful is political. Prolonged and widespread divestment by mainstream institutions can cause the target industry to become politically isolated, which can increase the ease with which governments can enact policies that would disadvantage that industry. Indeed, past successful divestment movements have typically resulted in policy actions made possible by such political isolation. The fossil fuel industry is particularly vulnerable to political isolation, because it operates in an infrastructural market rather than a popular consumer market, so that it is subject to political and policy pressures much more than to direct consumer pressure.

Indeed, the need for policy to lead the market when it comes to fossil fuels — for example, by reducing subsidies to fossil fuel companies or by pricing carbon emissions — has long been recognized. However, fossil fuel companies have a clear and recognizable interest in preventing a transition away from fossil fuels. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that the less political influence the fossil fuel industry has, the easier it will be for governments to take effective policy actions on climate change. This means that proponents of carbon pricing and other policy actions should support divestment, because divestment makes such policy actions more likely to succeed. If divestment erodes the political influence of the fossil fuel industry, even to some degree, then it will have been useful for the ultimate objective of minimizing the threat of climate change.

Of course, universities have resisted calls to divest precisely because it generates political isolation of the target, so that divestment is argued to be “political.” In practical terms, what is meant by “political” is that those who divest early (and thus push divestment further into the mainstream) might make some enemies in the process. Thus, divestment becomes an issue of priorities: Is it worth it for a university to take some flak in order to increase the effectiveness of policy action on climate?

The answer depends on where one’s priorities lie, though shying away from actions that would benefit the common good out of a fear of making enemies seems a cowardly, morally vacuous position to hold (and if this is the logic of our universities, then they probably deserve to take flak). Regardless of one’s position, though, it is hard to deny that we can expect divestment to contribute to the political isolation of fossil fuel companies, and thus to the effectiveness of government policy actions on climate change.

Thus, there are at least three reasons why we can expect divestment to be useful: institutional, social and political. Additional points of utility for divestment may also exist. For example, we can expect the coal industry, in particular, to show direct financial vulnerability to mass divestment, because coal stocks are relatively illiquid, and thus mass divestment could materially reduce the stock prices and thus the market capitalizations of coal companies.

In line with this expectation, last year’s SEC filing from Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company, noted that divestment efforts, along with other related factors such as unfavorable lending policies and increased regulation, was a risk factor that could significantly affect demand for its products or securities (here, on page 29). So multiple clear lines of reasoning exist that indicate that divestment is useful.

Furthermore, the demonstrable evidence available so far also indicates that divestment is useful. For example, NRG recently announced its intention to decarbonize its operations in alignment with the 2-degree C global warming goal, and the company cited the growth of the divestment movement as a contributing factor in its decision. Another example is the time and money that the fossil fuel industry is now spending in attempts to impede the divestment movement, which indicates that the industry considers the divestment movement to be a threat to its interests. Thus, the argument that divesting won’t have any affect is contradicted not just by multiple lines of reasoning, but by a growing body of demonstrable evidence.

Now, let’s go back to the Financial Times’ argument:

A genuine solution to the threat of climate change will require a price on greenhouse gas emissions, greater investment in energy innovation, switching from coal to gas to power generation, cost-effective means of storing carbon dioxide, and a global framework that encourages all the countries of the world to participate.

Few would dispute those goals. The argument goes on to claim, “Divestment helps with none of those.”

On the contrary: We can expect divestment to help with all of those, based on multiple lines of reasoning and the growing body of evidence we see before us. This means that divestment is highly relevant to the ultimate objective of minimizing the threat of climate change.

The conclusion? Those who are serious about climate change should base their analyses on reason and evidence, not on rhetoric. And both reason and evidence say that we need to be serious about divestment.

When my daughter was little, I parented her from a place of fear.

Anxiety, to be exact. Like most new moms, I was scared of messing things up. Having been through a psychology class or two, I wanted my daughter to have a secure attachment. I wanted her to have the right clothes, stroller and diapers. She should have the best classes, etc.

Sound familiar? It happens to most of us.

As she grew, I continued to be scared of messing up. Her acting out felt unacceptable. I didn’t want her to be rude or spoiled.

In my anxiety, I was always trying to shape her into something. I wanted to control her because I wanted to “get it right.” My fear and my love were all mixed up, in fact.

I didn’t accept her for who she was, and she could feel it. I didn’t trust who she was. It set us up as adversaries.

I was parenting out of fear, not out love and trust. And boy, was it getting us into difficulty.

Things only began to change as I started to see my insecurity. I saw that my parenting reflected my own fear and lack of trust. I thought that I was parenting from love. But in reality, my behavior stemmed from anxiety.

This is why are children are like little Zen teachers showing us what we need to work on (bowing to you, my challenging daughter).

Shift starts with awareness. Like the Dan Siegal quote that starts off every episode of the podcast, Zen Parenting Radio, says, “The best predictor of a child’s well-being is a parent’s self-understanding.” When I finally started to carry my own baggage, I could take it off my daughter. Once I understood myself through mindfulness practices, I could come more from love.

Are you parenting from love or from fear?

Parenting from fear feels worried and anxious frequently. Parenting from love trusts that your children are good and want to do and feel good.

Parenting from fear never lets your children solve their own problems or fail. Parenting from love understands that children need to work things out themselves and that failure is an important part of learning.

Parenting from fear insists on perfect grades, looks, performance in mostly everything. Parenting from love accepts children where they are and helps them when children need and want help.

Parenting from fear orders around your children. Parenting from love talks to children with the same care and respect you would use in talking to a friend.

Parenting from fear can’t handle your children’s difficult emotions. They aren’t acceptable. Parenting from love understands that as humans, we feel everything on the spectrum of human emotion and doesn’t take it so personally.

Parenting from fear forces.

Parenting from love accepts.

This fundamental shift requires that we wake up to what we do. That we wake up and understand the roots of our behavior.

How do we do that? Reading articles like this one. Making space and time in our lives so that we can nurture understanding. Surrounding ourselves with media that support us, like the Zen Parenting Radio podcast.

For me, the biggest shift came with regular mindfulness practice. Want support in making your own mindfulness practice? You can join my 14-day virtual retreat here. It’s free!

What do you think?

Looking deeply, can you see if you are parenting more from fear or love? Start the conversation in the comments below!

Self-understanding is the key that opens up the doors to living and parenting from love.

Thank you so much for reading and I’m looking forward to seeing you on the other side.