I have been feeling overwhelmed and powerless the past few months by all the anger, violence, and hatred in the news.  The problems feel so big, well beyond my capacity to do anything meaningful to make a difference. I became irritated, short-termpered and wasn't sleeping well. Rather than focusing on the big events, I decided to shift my focus to living my best simple life every day for the next 30 days. At first, it felt like denial, escaping from the "tragedy of the day", or I was becoming uncaring and out of touch. I made a few conscious consistent changes in my everyday activities to see what happened.