My 90 Minute Spiritual Practice to Help Preserve Our Democracy
What I'm Planning and Why
If you’re like me, the last 5 weeks have been a deluge of emotions as the Trump and Musk began their attempt to dismantle our democracy.
That’s by design, of course, because resistance is more difficult when people are in overwhelm. I have found myself reading too late into the night, overscrolling Facebook, and generally being more worried than I typically am.
This week, it became clear to me that I need to design my personal approach to the Trump era as a form of spiritual practice that is tailored to meet this moment with my skills. Here’s the design I came up with:
First, I needed a vision with goals, which is to make a positive impact while becoming stronger, more centered, more clear, and more effective in my contributions to preserving American democracy. That requires steady improvements each day and each week. All four of those elements are important so I designed a practice that enhances each.
Second, a spiritual practice needs boundaries. I decided on 90 minutes per day because it’s something I can fit into my life, which is quite full with running a mid-size company, being a dedicated Dad to two young girls, managing multiple properties and engaging community. To make it work, I’m shifting my bedtime to 9:30 pm so I can engage the practice from 5:15-6:45 before my girls are up and I put on on my other hats.
Third, I am tailoring my practice to my gifts. Given that we live remotely in the woods with a young family, frontline activism isn’t going to be my sweet spot. But I can write and speak in a way that touches and moves people. I’m also good at strategy and architecting new ideas. So that’s going to be my focus. I encourage you to design a practice that mirrors your own gifts and strengths.
So here’s the practice I came up with and the rationale:
Sleep 7.5 hours or more - this is the prerequiste for the practice to be sustainable and healthy, which means being rigorous about bedtime.
Start at 5:15 am with a 30 minute cardio and strength workout. This dispels stress, builds physical energy, and improves my health, as well as reducing negative emotions and encouraging positive confidence. I’m using the Mirror workouts by Lululemon, which means I don’t have to leave home. Since this administration aims to make us feel powerless to stop them, feeling more powerful is a key antidote.
After a workout, I’m ready for 15 minutes of meditation designed to center my mind and open my heart. This is calming and grounding. It’s also a great time to get inner guidance on right action. I’m planning to close with a few minutes of sending loving kindness to the Trump administration as it is more effective than negative energy, even while engaging in actions to curb their destructive behavior.
Next up is 15 minutes of strategic reading. Clarity comes from understanding the daily news cycle and the motivations of key actors in a deeper way, which also helps to inform my own writing and what I share on social. I find big-picture synthesizers, meta-journalists and opinion writers more useful than standard journalism, although a combination is ideal. 15 minutes of strategic reading is only about 4-5000 words, so daily discernment is key. I find it’s easier to absorb material calmly via reading rather than watching TV or videos, which are more agitating. I’ve been finding the following political writers/leaders particularly useful: Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, Seth Abramson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Thom Hartmann, Daniel Pinchbeck, David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristoff, and Rick Wilson. I subscribe to the New York Times online and unsubscribed to the Washington Post, which is now too compromised. I deleted my X account and only use BlueSky now (my article on why). I also follow The Lincoln Project and Meidas News. I plan to start reading more journalism from overseas if US publications get more compromised. One key video I recommend is Dark Gothic Maga to understand the tech right in Silicon Valley and their agenda via Vance and Musk. It’s heavy but provides necessary context.
Finally, I’m prepared for 30 minutes of action, which mostly for me takes the form of writing because that’s where I can add the most value. I plan to use the reading time to reflect on whatever I feel can be most useful to others. If I’m on a roll, I can do a first draft on a new article in 30 minutes or edit a previous one. For other people, this might be take the form of strategically sharing articles, reflections, and stories on social media. I do recommend regularly contacting your elected representatives via phone calls (202-224-3121 for the switchboard). For sharing, I recommend focusing on human stories that move people on the heart level, particularly ones that are already going viral. Peeling away MAGA supporters is going to be slow but is key to strengthening the pro-democracy movement and that’s best done respectfully with human stories rather than paradigm or policy battles.
I plan to do the above 5 days per week (I started today), giving myself the weekends off to focus on family, community, and restoration. Unplugging from the matrix and the field of collective angst is important so that my mind is not dominated by concerns about our democracy. Clarity of thinking fuels clarity of action.
That’s my gameplan in a nutshell, which will allow me to make daily and weekly progress on becoming stronger, more centered, more clear, and more effective with my contributions as well as generate a steady stream of outreach.
I encourage you to find your own spiritual practice for protecting our democracy that builds you up, dispels overwhelm, inspires others, and makes a difference. None of us by ourselves can turn the tide but millions of us certainly will.