Swipe Left - & Other Tricks for Turning Over What We Cannot Control

So, I am old enough, and have been married long enough, that I have never used a dating site. I am familiar with the concept, however, of swiping right – and left.?

As I understand it, swiping right indicates that you’re interested in engaging with a potential date, and to swipe left lets users move past unwanted or undesirable content (aka people they do not want to meet IRL).

Well, as a changemaker who’s got enough on her plate helping clients bring Balance & Joy into the hard work of changing the world, I "swipe right" on the good, and usually block, click the “X”, or swipe left when evidence of strife lands in my feed.

The Doomscroll

While I used to pride myself on how much news I consumed (afterall, I’ve got a Masters in Journalism) I now limit myself to about 10 minutes 2x per day of active news consumption (usually perusing the NYT and Washington Post online).?

The rest of the day, as push-through notifications from these and other sites try to lure me away with updates and insights, I can see enough from the headlines to get the gist.?

And most often, the stuff that gets pushed through as “Breaking News” is crisis, calamity, or controversy. As such, clicking, reading, engaging, will likely make me depressed, agitated, and unsettled. So, I just don't do it.

Indeed, I click on upsetting news so infrequently I was not even aware of the term doomscrolling until about six months ago.

And while it can be embarrassing to be out of the loop on current social media jargon (I can still recall when I had to ask someone to translate LMAO or, more recently, GOAT), in the case of doomscrolling, I was so very pleased to have no idea what that meant.?

Resist.

As someone who grew up with politics looming large at every family dinner and holiday gathering, as someone who’s devoted her life to making the world a better place, knowledge about issues and distress about injustice was our family calling card. But for however much we knew or did, it was never enough to fix the problem or assuage the pain. We had to learn to live a sense of responsibility to act tempered by humility that we could only do so much.

So the fact that I do not doomscroll, and risk the guffaw of not knowing a certain bit of news as soon as everyone else, if it means I protected my serenity, I consider it a win.

What I do, honestly (and this may be more loving than what happens when a potential mate left-swipes on Tinder), is say “God’s got this one” as I brush the news item off my screen.?

I use God here not in a religious sense, although you surely could. Instead, it’s shorthand for Universe, Higher Power, anything other than me, and a reminder that, like the many multitudes working on equity, justice, peace, planet, etc., I can only do so much.

I will keep doing it, and find chances to play along the way. And I know angst, anger, overwhelm will not get me closer to solutions, and might even cause me to burn out and give up before I can accomplish the good (however big or small) I was put here on earth to do.

Leverage Your Swipe and Carry On

So next time a headline about a war, flood, fire, or political scandal lands on your screen and you start to feel your stress rise and your stomach churn, just turn it over, swipe left, and get back to the work (or play) at hand.

Orange boots, gumbo, and a cartwheel that turned her world upside down. This episode of The PlayFull Podcast features special guest? Lisha Bell , Fund Manager for PayPal’s $100M Equity Fund, Founder of BLXVC, and member of Global Women in VC, Lisha talks about the vital work of increasing access to capital for BIPOC entrepreneurs and reveals the unlikely journey that took her from making change at her Dad’s gas station as a kid to making change on the global stage today. @coolhaus?dairy-free ice cream makes an appearance during What’s the Scoop, the pod’s recurring segment where we eat sweets and talk about how we came to care.

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