"Unfollow" is all the rage on Facebook at the moment. In the 2016 election season, it's a salve we use to treat the fever pitch of political posts on social media. I've noticed a big uptick in it over the last few months, but this week it's practically #trending.

It seems like an simple cure-all, right? Less disagreement = more mindfulness.

But then I dug a little deeper, and as with most everything, once you really stop and think about it there's a lot more to consider.

On one hand, differences of opinion can quickly make us angry and argumentative, and 9-times-out-of-10, anger isn't mindful. Truth be told, I’ve unfollowed a few people on Facebook myself. It's not that I dislike these friends, it's just that my reaction to their posts often became a frustrating distraction. I felt like I needed to unfollow to retain some level of sanity. I know I'm not alone in this. 

On the other hand, there's the problem of self-segregation. That is, avoiding all differences of opinion and surrounding yourself with only your most agreeable friends. When you do this, it's easy to get trapped inside your own dogma. If you never hear a different opinion and no one ever challenges your ideas, there's little room for growth.

So what's the answer? Is unfollowing on Facebook a good or bad thing?

Well, like a lot things in life it's not black or white, but somewhere in the gray. Overall, it's about balance.

If you have a friend who says racist things and has a hateful view of the world, it's OK to distance yourself. You do this all the time in all sorts of relationships—you don't choose to date someone when your personalities are mismatched, and you're certainly not required to be friends with someone who holds fundamentally different values than you.

But there can, and will, be some differences of opinion among friends, and that's OK. Everyone comes from a different place in life, and maybe it's when we expose our differences that we start to learn from one another. Also, remember that you always have the option to just not comment on a post you don't ike. You could even take your discussion to a private message or (gasp!) a face-to-face conversation, both places where we tend to be a little kinder to one another.

Politics has the potential to bring out both the best and the worst in people. We all get passionate sometimes, and even if we disagree the reason we're passionate is that we fundamentally care about our country, our world, and at the most universal level, each other.

So strike a balance—do what you need to do to retain your sanity this political season, even if that means editing your newsfeed experience a bit. But try allowing a few challenging opinions into your bubble. Get OK with a little debate and respectful disagreement.  It could strengthen your opinion or make you rethink it, but either way you come out a better person. ​

So I'm making this concerted effort to be a mindful advocate, to respectfully disagree whenever I run into a difference of opinion... especially on the Internet... and especially around politics. There's so much digital yelling out there, it's unmindful, and the more I see the less I want to be a part of it.

But then I also know passions are high and these decisions are vital. We should all stand our ground in the fight against injustice and inequality. It's important, so it's easy to get caught up in it.

What I'm searching for is a balance--being an advocate for progress but also toning down the rhetoric, turning up the kindness, and maybe using the simple act of a respect to actually sway people to your cause.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so the saying goes. This is true in pretty much all aspects of life, but it especially applies to political persuasion. Who in their right mind is going to change their right mind when you unmindfully toss insults?

Let's be clear though, taking a mindful approach to politics doesn't require silence in the face of injustice. While it's true that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, sometimes those flies are total douchebags and need to be swatted away.

When someone is contemptuous, when their stance harms you or your people, when they resort to cruelty, when they throw all ration out the window, when they support a level of ignorance that could lead to the destruction of our species (like climate science deniers), by all means call them out. Don't stand for it. Don't ever kowtow to hate, bigotry, corrupt ideology, or downright treacherous zealotry.

But when you call them out, don't stoop to their level and be a douchebag in return.

If you really want to advocate for your cause, it's time to stop the irrational anger. Stealing a few cues from mindfulness, here are some suggestions to help us all get there.

1. Breathe. It sounds so basic, but it's still something I forget on the regular. Just today someone lobbed an insult at me in response to what I felt was a fairly reasonable comment on a political post. I got so angry my fingers shook as I attempted to respond. But I quickly realized that no response I made in that anger would live up to my mindful advocate standards. I put the phone down, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. Breathing is like a reset button, a clearing of the cache, a metaphorical New Years Day--it's a chance to start over and do better.
2. Open your mind. There will always be a diversity of opinion out there. My immediate thought when someone disagrees with me is that it must be ignorance or a lack of education. But consider for a moment that they are indeed a caring, interested person, who loves their friends and family just like you, but their background and life experience have led them to view things in a different light. We should make an effort to open our minds and accept everyone for who they are, not to filter them through the sieve of our own exerpience.
3. Drop the ego. Far too often in this election cycle I've encountered some seriously self-assured and self-righteous posts and comments. In politics, it's easy to get passionately wrapped up in our cause--we're so right, we can't be swayed, we can't take criticism, and we dig our heals in. But there's always another way of thinking about any issue (see #2). When we put on the blinders of ego, the temptation to go negative and lash out can be overwhelming. Rants and insults don't do you or your cause any favors. Be confident in your opinion, your cause, and your candidate, but don't be overconfident.
4. Pause before posting. Too often on social media we're encouraged to have an instant response. In today's digital society, if you don't have a clever take on the latest news item then clearly you're not with it. But that instant reaction is usually one dimensional, and that instantly angry reaction to something you disagree with usually leads to a similarly angry response. When we give ourselves a break, take a few breaths, open our mind a smidge, and let go of ego (see #1, #2, & #3), we'll usually come out on the other side with a more thoughtful and convincing response.
5. Drop knowledge, not bombs. This is a big. Many political posts on social media are filled with opinion and innuendo, conspiracy theories and inconspicuous copypastas. When we respectfully disagree, we stick to facts. We provide evidence to support our cause, we don't repeat baseless and unprovable claims. Remember, you're trying to convince people that your cause is righteous, and you don't prove anything with a meme or a biased article.

Every time we respond to someone who disagrees with us we have a choice: come at them with the force of a thousand poo emojis, or respectfully disagree. That choice is the difference between our sanity and high blood pressure. It's the difference between a sleepless night and warm fuzzy dream. It's the difference between entrenched opinions and persuasive arguments.

I know this isn't easy, I get angry over political differences too. But next time you start to fume, take a mindfulness break. Step away from the laptop or your phone, take a deep breath, and think about what you are about to say in return. Does it foster a positive debate? Will it educate and inform? Will it encourage people to reconsider their opinion? Or are you responding to their douchebaggery by becoming a douchebag yourself?

Don't be a douchebag, respectfully disagree.

Once in awhile, more and more lately, I find myself reading the comments.

I know, rookie move, especially if you’re someone making a brave attempt to find peace in today’s convoluted digital world. We are all aware that the comments, the trolls that populate them, and the attempts at righteous persuasion that unwittingly feed those trolls, are the landfills of the Internet. It’s where good ideas get flogged to death and bad ideas spread like the zika virus.

So why do I keep getting drawn into that mess? It's all due to that quadrennial tradition known as the American presidential election. In this digital age, the traditional ruthlessness of politics has gotten worse, and it's too bad, because the decision we're debating is more important than ever.

My quest: give a damn about politics because I know the consequences are major, but stay mindful in the process. It’s a tall order, I know.

My friends, welcome to the Great Election Hurricane of 2016. The river of opinions has swelled for months now. What started as trickle of ideas and endorsements has become an incessant downpour of rants, a cascade of comment wars, and a deluge of slant pieces and snark memes. The rising tide of anger and frustration inevitably breaks the levee--again--impassioning friends to turn on one another, to toss out vicious insults, and level infantile cries of ignorance toward anyone who dares to challenge their preconceived notions.

I'm no noob, I know the game of politics is complex and messy. Possibly little known fact to many readers of this blog, but I hold a master's degree in public policy and I worked in political advocacy for years. Other than mindfulness and nature, politicking is my bread and butter. So I've watched and studied this sport for decades, observing the stick-to-the-issues idealists, the nothing-but-smear-campaign demagogues, and every candidate in between.

I'm also acutely aware of just how important all this is. It's a vital part of democracy that we have different ideas and debate them heartily. More than that, it's absolutely necessary that all of us actively participate in our political process, because the decisions our leaders make are often the difference between life and death.

But as much as I want to engage this critical pursuit, I also don’t want to engage myself into insanity. 

To me, this year feels starkly different than elections of the past. The age of social media and the lack of mindfulness it provokes has made for a perfect storm of political aggravation. This digital tempest of competition inevitably leads to a slew of unmindful behavior. So how do we calm the storm? How do we stay mindful within the whirlwind election season?

In this new election age, we must strive to become mindful advocates.

Someone who listens to different opinions.
Someone who stays true to themselves without becoming self-righteous.
Someone who leads by example instead of prescription.
Someone who stays respectful in the face of disagreement.
Someone who doesn't always have to be right.
Someone who turns the other cheek instead of responding with a taunt.

And none of that is easy, trust me I know. Go to the Facebook page of any presidential candidate and (just for research) read the comments. There's a flood of rage out there overwhelming the dam of rational sanity--opinions stated as facts, opinions becoming insults, opinions inciting outrage. When I see this, I start to get outraged myself.

Sometimes my own opinion has lead me to waste a good hour formulating a comment that I don't actually end up posting. Sometimes I see friends who agree on the need for progress toward a fair and just world, belittle each other over a slight disagreement on how we achieve that progress. Sometimes I see caring Americans who agree that we want to better our nation, level vile insults at each other because they disagree on the definition of “better.” Usually at the end of a day I’m left dispirited by it all, exhausted by all the time I’ve wasted watching and/or participating in it, saddened by the savagery I’ve seen it foster.

But being a mindful advocate means we still participate---we don’t give up our identity or passion, we don't stop advocating for our candidate, and we always speak up to injustice. We just do all that with civility and respect.

And we do so because we are at a crucial time in our civilization.

Historically, the debate of ideas in politics has never been simple or easy. Neither the ancient Greeks nor our founding fathers pulled any punches. The liberal and the conservative side of our democracy, today’s Democrats and Republicans, have always been at odds. At one point this conflict even led us to civil war. But most of the time, when push came to shove, our leaders compromised and worked together for the good of the country.

Today the decisions we make as voters, and by proxy the leaders we choose, go even further and have the potential to affect the good and bad of the entire world, be it poverty, war, or environmental calamity. It behooves us to look toward our deep commonalities and to nobly convince others of our ideas for change rather than resort to attacks, lies, and conspiracy theories. When we treat our fellow man with respect not just to have a better shot at changing minds, but to have a better shot at saving our planet from uncertain doom.

So I pledge to be a mindful advocate and an activist for good.

To trumpet my beliefs without tearing others' down.
To debate at the appropriate time, but do so with respect.
To speak to those I encounter as if they were real people instead faceless digital avatars.
To accept that we can differ on the policy but still agree on the end goal.
To inspire rather than incite.
To love rather than lash out.

To show by my example that, in this day and age, such civility is even possible.

This is how we make America great again. This is how we save the world. This is how you convince people to vote for your candidate. This is the way of the mindful advocate.