The Simplest Way To Feel Better In Terrible Times

I’m giving a talk in Seattle on 12/3 as part of the Daily Stoic Live tour— grab seats and come see me ! I’ll also be in San Diego on February 5 and Phoenix on February 27. More dates will be announced soon— sign up here and we’ll let you know when I’m coming to your area.

It’s easy to feel disoriented and disillusioned right now.

There’s so much happening in the world, and so much of it feels terrible. There is dysfunction. There is conflict. There is outright lawlessness. There is corruption. There is cruelty.

But there’s a really simple way to feel better. 

I don’t mean turning off the news—though you should definitely do that, as we’ve talked about. I don’t mean taking care of yourself—though that matters too and you should. Go for a run. Meditate. Eat better. Go to therapy. This is all great.

I’m talking about something simpler. Something that works immediately. Something that every wisdom tradition has taught but we keep forgetting:

Do something nice for someone else.

It may seem like a small thing. In fact, it’s everything.

There’s an old story about a boy who comes upon a beach covered in starfish—hundreds, thousands of them washed up on the shore. It’s an appalling, tragic sight. On the verge of tears, he begins throwing them back into the sea, one by one.

“It doesn’t matter,” an adult tells him. “You’ll never even make a dent in this.”

“It matters to this starfish,” the boy says, as he rescues another one.

He’s right. To the person you’re helping, to the person whose burden you are lessening, there is nothing “small” about it. When the Talmud says that he who saves one person saves the world, maybe that’s partly what they meant—you certainly save that person’s whole world.

We get this backwards so often. Despite the expression “all politics is local,” we tend to think big picture before we think little picture. We obsess over grand gestures, complete solutions, systemic change. Meanwhile, there’s suffering right in front of us. A neighbor who needs help. A food bank down the street. A person we could make smile today.

Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about a period of his life where he felt like good fortune had abandoned him. And indeed, it certainly looked like it had. There was the Antonine plague, which would kill literally millions of people during his reign. There were wars, floods, and famines. He would bury several of his children. He was betrayed by his most trusted general in what amounted to an attempted coup. He did not meet with “the good fortune he deserved,” one ancient historian noted, “as his whole reign was a series of troubles.”

But instead of throwing himself a pity party, instead of despairing, he rewrote his definition of “good fortune.” It was not getting everything you wanted, he said. No, “true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

About five years ago, increasingly disgusted by the commercialism of Thanksgiving and Christmas—at least here in the US—I was thinking about just not participating. I hated that every year businesses were expected to offer bigger and bigger sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I hated the clips on the news about people fighting over a deal on a flat screen television. But I decided instead of just writing about it, I would try to do something about it with my own small business. 

So on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we ran a fundraiser for Feeding America, a nonprofit that works to provide meals to families experiencing hunger, instead. I put in the first $10,000 and we raised another $100,000. The next year we did it again and every year since. Cumulatively, we’ve raised something like $1M or 10,000,000 meals for people in need. 

Did that save the world? Of course not, but it definitely made someone’s world a little better. And you know what else? It made me and my world better too. 

That’s what generosity does, by the way. Yes, it helps the person who receives it but it also changes you into the kind of person who does stuff like that. 

Yes, this world is filled with overwhelming, intractable problems. We face massive “collective action problems,” as the economists call them. Systems that seem too broken to fix. Suffering too vast to address.

And yet.

And yet it falls to each of us to do what we can, where we can, with what we have.

Seneca reminds us that every person we meet is an opportunity for kindness. The elderly neighbor sitting alone on their front porch. The parent in the airport trying to wrangle their toddlers and carry-ons through security. The coworker who seems to be overwhelmed. How are you doing? Do you need anything? Can I help you with that? These opportunities are everywhere, every day. The question is whether we see them. Whether we take them.

Of course, you don’t need to donate to a fundraiser to make a difference. Money isn’t the only currency of generosity. You can give your time. Your energy. Your attention. Your patience. Your kindness.

You can go on hoping or holding your breath until you’re blue in the face, Marcus Aurelius writes in Marcus Aurelius. People are going to keep doing what they do. If you want to feel good, if you want to see good…you’re going to have to do it. 

I’ve been disappointed and appalled at the idea of SNAP benefits being used as political leverage (to almost complete indifference) here in the U.S the last month. So after seeing our local food bank post about the overwhelming demand they were facing, my wife and I walked over and covered a big hole in the budget. In anticipation of everyone moving the announcements of their Black Friday sales up, we thought, hey, let’s move up our food drive too. 

So that’s what we’re doing!

We donated the first $30,000 and I’d love your help in getting to our goal of $300,000—which would provide over 3 million meals for families across the country! (Just head over to dailystoic.com/feeding—every dollar provides 10 meals, even a small donation makes a big difference.) 

The point is: It’s on us.

We don’t control what’s happening globally, but we do control how we act locally. We control who we are. We control what we do. 

If you want to feel better, do better. Do more. 

Give. 

Give enough that it hurts…and see how great you feel. 

Do something nice for someone else.

It makes life better for them.

And I promise—it will make you feel better too.