5 tips for cultivating good will in a season of division

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies…The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Good will requires cultivation. A gardener must tenderly care for new seedlings if they are to survive into maturity and the season of harvest. In the bleak dark midwinter, it’s sometimes hard to believe spring will come again. In the midst of emotional pain, it’s hard to believe that healing will come again, too. It may not feel like it right now, but I believe the restless, disgruntled season of division will also eventually end.

In the meantime, I’m cultivating a liminal “in-between” emotional practice: Letting go of ill will.

Let me tell you, it is not easy. When you are frustrated and angry at a situation, it’s easy to blame others and wish them ill. Just like many of you, I have “pandemic fatigue,” sick (so to speak), and tired of staying in to be safe and chaffing at restrictions. It doesn’t matter whether I think this is sensible, it’s still plenty annoying and frustrating. I have people I blame for this continuing mess, and I find I wish to send them to Dante’s eighth circle of hell reserved for fraudsters.

Dealing with negativity

Holding a grudge with destructive thoughts is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. It doesn’t help me at all to hang onto my resentment, irritation, and anger. I know in my heart of hearts that ill will creates a vicious cycle of negativity. It’s not how I want to live or be remembered. I’d much rather people thought of me as someone willing to do the hard work of cultivating good will. Very, very hard. At the present moment, instead of consciously aiming loving-kindness in a distasteful direction, I think it’s enough not to wish ill will on another.

I rarely talk about my own spiritual practices. I generally stick to pragmatic advice on how to deal with some particular challenge, often related to teaching and working in higher education. After an incredibly trying time beginning in March and lasting (so far) through this December, we all deserve a serious holiday break from our daily annoyances. A time out for resting and recovering from endless Zoom meetings, disengaged students and sometimes equally disengaged teachers due to burnout, and constantly changing protocols for gathering in classes. In the midst of all the aggravation, saying, “I wish you no ill” is a challenging spiritual practice.

Cultivating positivity

Cultivating positive emotions like compassion and empathy, combined with attitudes of calm and kindness, can go a long way to easing your own pain. These will heal your heart, brain, body, and mind. We have a natural bias toward noticing negative emotions. All emotions have been around for millennia as a part of human evolution and relate to survival. Anger tells you something is wrong, fear tells you to be careful where you step. Such emotions encourage you to take action. Positive emotions, on the other hand, encourage you to sit still and enjoy yourself, basking in happiness or pleasure. Yet positive emotions open the way of discovery while negative emotions close off ways of seeing things in a new way.

Positive versus negative emotions and your health

Research has demonstrated again and again that positive emotions are good for healing, reducing heart disease risk, helping with weight control, and ultimately leading to a longer life. You may not know it, but negative and positive emotions are physically associated with particular areas of the brain network. Dr. Richard J. Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has done research showing positive emotions activate reward conduits deep in the brain, including an area known as the ventral striatum associated with the limbic system. Good feelings activate good physical health, including the reduction of stress hormones like cortisol.

On the other side, negative emotions trigger a response in the amygdala, which plays into our sense of fear and anxiety. The longer you live with negative emotions, the more likely you are to have a weakened immune system. This can make it more likely you will get sick, or have more trouble recovering from a sickness of any sort. If you live in a state of constant stress with elevated cortisol levels, you may even be shortening your life.

5 tips to cultivate good will and improve your emotional wellness

You can improve your own emotional wellness and let go of ill will with some very basic practices.

1. Cultivate good will with positive emotions. Allow yourself to feel contentment. Develop and grow gratitude. Notice when you are happy or joyful. Be at peace once you have exerted all your effort to change something, and the results are not what you hoped. Nurture good supportive relationships with people close to you…and call them on their negativity if you need to. You will help both of you.
2. Work for peace by refusing to engage with others intent on cultivating ill will. You cannot see inside anyone’s head but your own, and even that can be pretty opaque in terms of motivations. Be careful about attributing bad intentions to others around you. Yes, this is hard. Practice being less contentious. These are turbulent times, and we are all suffering in different ways. Sometimes those ways result in nasty, resentful speech. We must learn to accept differences of opinion as a basic tenet of civilized conversation. If you cannot agree to disagree, it may be wise to walk away.
3. Bring compassion to yourself and kindness to others. Horrific acts engender hatred and lead to calcifying prejudices and positions. Don’t mistake kindness for lying down and letting other people walk all over you. As Alice Resnick, education professor and associate dean for global engagement at Bryn Mawr College, remarked in an article for Inside Higher Ed, true kindness is actually about setting boundaries around behavior that is acceptable or not acceptable.
4. Keep things in perspective. You are one piece of the whole, and the whole includes both our light and dark sides. The taijitu symbol for the Chinese characters of interlocking spirals with two dots superimposed on them for yin and yang is a perfect illustration of this idea. Remembering that the circle encompasses both, keeping perspective can help you recognize what is going well, see more rationally, and find learning opportunities for long term goals.
5. Never forget the basics of physical self-care: eating right, exercising, sleeping well, and maintaining social connections. These days, I put limiting social media in the category of self-care. By taking care of yourself, you can lessen your immediate reactions of anger and spitefulness when others engage in behavior that upsets you. Breathing deeply through your nose, at least three inhales and exhales, allows you the space to disengage from negativity.

Sometimes it really is enough to wish no ill on another. I will keep trying to practice that for myself and those around me, and those I do not even know. As the seasonal song by Rick and Sylvia Powell says, “Peace, peace, peace on earth and good will to all.”

If you are still struggling to practice good will Hillary can help.

Tags: attitude, good will, gratitude, happiness