and mental health is declining everywhere

You may have seen those videos of people bursting out laughing in a tube carriage, and within minutes everyone is laughing. Or when you walk into a place of prayer and instantly feel a calming serenity. It's the same phenomenon when an angry leader harangues his troops with hateful rhetoric, leaving behind heated spirits and aggressive behaviour.

Emotion is a subtle and powerful language. Those who fail to develop their emotional intelligence find themselves easily manipulated.

If, like me, you follow the news in our world, take a moment to observe: do you feel a heavy tension inside you? Do you feel overwhelmed by the constant flow of worrying news? You are not alone. This phenomenon, which spreads much faster than COVID, is what experts call ‘secondary trauma.’

Being constantly exposed to traumatic events through the media, social networks, or other people's personal stories affects us more deeply than we imagine. This insidious stress seeps into us, causing mental fog, emotional numbness, insomnia, depression and so on. Add to this the pressure of an authoritarian superior, impossible deadlines, suffocating bureaucracy and a sluggish economy, and the cocktail of mental suffering is quickly ready.

The solutions are there, simple and accessible to all. The challenge is not to know what to do, but to put it into practice, step by step, every day. The hardest part is getting started. I encourage you to :

• Stop watching the news on television or on your phone
• Take regular walks in nature
• Take a few minutes of silence, just two, to concentrate on your breathing, your heart, and remember a moment when you felt love and joy
  

If you'd like to explore this subject further, I recommend you take a look at the Heartmath.org method.