Manifesto: A Life Of Stability And Creativity

The Bridge to Self-Love

By: Carla Frias

For the past 50 years, psychologist have been worried about the rise of anxiety diagnosed in teenagers and young adults (Hutchison). Anxiety is a normal emotion that causes alertness when we are in danger, but when it becomes a constant feelings, it can become a disorder. Family problems, working jobs, social pressures, each person is dealing with their own worries in the path of life.Our values have changed, but I am afraid they are not for the better.

To help alleviate the wave of anxiety, we need to understand the causation of this emotion: our lack of social understanding. I believe that every person needs to take the time to understand themselves better. Focus on internal healing. We are all unique in our on way. Let’s appreciate our authenticity and understand the emotions that we are bottling inside. Let’s learn how to cope with our anxiety by expressing better who we are. We are all alive, but we are truly awaken when we recognize that what’s truly important all lies in the inside of us.

Below I will describe my ideal world, one that encourages mental health, sustainable living and spirituality through the support of creativity and self-reflective techniques. I have divided my proposition into three different categories: creative-love, educational-love and global-love. Each of these aim to enhance our civilization by raising our level of consciousness about our selves, our minds and how we can express our thoughts. Let’s recognize our potential and grab a hold of our love.

1. Educational-Love

What we learn in class should look beyond the facts.

• Every high-school student receives a journal at the begging of the year. This journal will include introspective and reflective questions every week/day. This will allow students to question themselves through their learning. Rate what they are learning i school. Their personal feelings and experiences that they have at that time.
• Workshops for Personal Growth: Hour long discussions on topics like: neuroscience, karma, meditation, how to understand emotions. These classes will be guided by a mindfulness psychologist, with meditation time included. The class will help students be more relaxed and have more positive emotions, as well as help them learn from early age how to be aware of the present moment.
• Yoga classes will be integrated in the Physical Education (PE) class curriculum. Students get to do yoga for minimum of one month three times a week, either in the morning, lunch or afternoon (depending on the schedule). Each yoga class is approximately 15–25 minutes and will aim to bring more awareness to students about the mind-body connection.
• Pregnant Parents have access to parenting workshop. Guided by child-development experts, couple psychologist and teachers will share their tips and tricks on how to be supportive and healthy parents. People will learn things like the importance of love and nourishment, introduction to child psychology, and good diets for kids. A lot of anxiety from teenagers comes from past traumas that we have from our childhood. No parent is ever born knowing how to be a good parent, but we can give them tools to complement their lifestyle.

Global-Love

This category describes the living standards that should be enforced in society, one that supports emotional well-being and happiness as the new foundations of life.

• People are encouraged to work for 6–8 hours a day (unless discussed previously) with higher proper wages. This way, employees have more free time. A lot of the anxiety is caused by the economic demand to pay the bills. If we give people financial support with more time in their hands, we can have the opportunity to engage in activities that are liberating for the mind.
• Yoga and martial arts classes are offered in local parks at least 3 times a week. This is organized and financed by the Parks & Recreation Center of each town in board. This will encourage people step outside of their house, breath some fresh air and spend some time in nature away from the crumbling thoughts that can sometimes be elicited at home. It will also help people stretch their bodies and engage in an activities that is blissful for the heart and soul.
• Every teenager is encouraged to have a water bottle purchased by the school. This will encourage kids to drink water through out the day while also reducing the contamination of plastic water bottles. Water is the single most important nutrient in our bodies. Our brains depends on a proper hydration of fluids and liquids in order to function optimally (Gowin). Hopefully these hydro flasks can further inceltivize this need to drink water for a good health of mind.
• Following along the proposal, every sink in the house comes with a built-in filter so that everyone can have access to free and clean water. (Solar panels to be added in the future)

Art-Love

The arts is an important part of being human. If you find your own artistic expression, it can really help to let go of what one may be repressing on the inside. The arts needs to be empowered and supported just as much as any other dimension in our life. It needs to be considered as an excellent coping mechanism for the anxiety that one could have.

• Free social activities are organized by schools and non-profits involving the arts and the crafts. A big emphasize on street art, chalk on the streets, writing workshops, photography hunts, among others. This will start a positive social movement to spend time doing activities related to our creative sense of self. This will also offer more job opportunities to artist looking to teach their own techniques in life.
• Each state/country will have at-least one exclusive “positive newspaper” that recognizes the good deeds and achievements of people from around the world. It can be anything from a social campaign to a individual research project, the point is to celebrate creativity used to create positive social goods! With the stressful news that we are bombarded each day, it would be nice for a change to read positive actions. Lets inspire great ideas through great leaders.

Finding emotional stability should not only be the work of a psychologist, it should be a priority for everyone that wants to live a blissful life. I believe it is possible to work through the situations that are causing anxiety; The most impactful way being to make understanding of themselves and their thoughts. As described above, the method that I propose is to engage people in an environment that impulses self expression, both through reflective exercise and opportunities for creative activities. Only this way do I believe that we will all be capable of fostering an environment that supports our emotions, and teaches us how to deal with the power of the mind.

I propose for a world of peace and tranquility, one that gives us time to stop worrying too much and enjoy our time alive. Anxiety needs to be recognized, it needs to be remediated and it needs to be taken into full account. We must work together to support our feelings and our creativity inside. Only then we can live peace with one another, but most importantly, we can all live in a peaceful state of mind.

Sources

Garber, J., (2010). “Comorbidity of Anxiety and Depression in Youth: Implications for Treatment and Prevention.” Clinic of Psychology. Doi: 10.1111/j.1468–2850.2010.01221

Gowin, J., (2010). “Why Your Brain Needs Water.” Psychology Today. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/you-illuminated/201010/why-your-brain-needs-water

Hutchison, C., (2009). “Today’s Teens More Anxious, Depressed and Paranoid than Ever: Consumer culture may be to blame, researchers say.” ABC News. Retrieved from: www.abcnews.go.com