Build with those who are ready: 2023 intentions

A panorama of Oregon’s Crater Lake, from a July camping trip

In setting last year’s intentions, I focused on four content buckets: ideas and concepts I wanted to explore and advance. While that helped structure my priorities for the year, in retrospect it made it difficult to measure progress for my own transformation.

So this year I want to keep the general structure of a key theme and some top-level intentions, but to focus them more around self-work: what are the things I’m trying to become better at as a human, as me… and then turn my attention to domains of practice.

Topline Theme: Build with those who are ready

One key part of my annual retrospective process is paying attention to what energized me and what drained me (see here for my key learnings from 2022). This theme I’ve been moving toward steadily over the last 18 months, and this year it really crystallized as a key commitment. The work I’m trying to do is so incredibly difficult that it requires all of my capacity: it’s too draining to also do the work of trying to convince others to do it too.

I really resonated with this line from Kate Raworth (hat-tip to the Alternative UK for the share):

“Don’t waste time knocking on shut doors; work with people who want to act, because there are plenty of them.”

This is part of what gives me motivation: I think that for the first time in my life, the demand for transformation actually exceeds supply. Which means it is actually a high-leverage choice to work with those who are ready… because demonstrating possibility catalyzes imagination, builds hope, and in turn encourages more people to want to join.

I also want to name here one specific aspect of how I understand what it means to be “ready,” (hat-tip to Leela Newman for naming this for me). It’s a longing I feel to stay in connection during conflict: to recognize that conflict is inevitable, necessary, and healthy (in its proper form)…and that together we can navigate it, inside community and shared commitments to right relationship and centered accountability. This is a key part of how I understand what it means to be in community… and it’s a big ask. It requires, among other things: our ability to self-regulate when triggered; to identify and name our needs; to practice active listening; to seek a path forward within mutual capacity and consent; to take responsibility for our impact, even and especially where it clashes with our intent; to own our decisions… etc.

A second implication flows from the first, an idea beautifully expressed by Michel Bachmann: that actually it’s about starting with people, and then deciding what to do together. Within boundaries, of course: among those people committed to building a world where everyone belongs, I’m coming to believe that the surest path to success is to find those individuals with whom I feel the most resonance… and then find something to build together. Anything, really: the specific expression of collaboration feels less important than the act of collaborating deeply with kindred spirits.

Embodying the invitation

At a Strozzi workshop in March 2020, I framed the commitment that continues to guide my life:

I am a commitment to sharing my longings, from a place of invitation and noncoercion.

The good news: I’ve made huge progress on identifying my longings (authenticity), and sharing them (vulnerability). And I’m getting better at doing so from a genuine posture of invitation, which Samantha Slade reminds us requires true openness to both a yes and a no that honors the agency of the person receiving the invitation.

But: I continue to struggle with noncoercion. Not because of intent: indeed, I added that second qualifier around noncoercion to my commitment precisely because I recognize the very real systems of oppression that make it very difficult for people to respond to invitations (and mine in particular) from a place of true agency. When I speak an invitation from my body (tall, white, American, from a privileged class background, elite-educated, socialized into power, trained in speech & debate)… it has the impact of feeling like a demand. If I’m not incredibly careful (and even sometimes if I am) the mere act of offering an invitation… can land with the impact of coercion.

The “invitation” I’m speaking to here is twofold. I aspire to live my life as an embodied invitation to the kind of world I want to live in… one where everyone belongs. So the first invitation is general: to invite others to do the same (share their longings, live their truths). The second connotation is more specific: sometimes I am inviting specific people to join me in collaboration… but only where my invitation speaks to their own longings, where they can consent from a place of authentic desire.

Three intentions: embodied discernment

I endeavor to choose intentions that show up fractally in my life: that is, I can practice them in multiple domains/relationships (parenting, professional, personal, romantic, etc).

There are two threads that unite these three intentions as I seek to live into my commitment: embodiment (getting out of my head, integrating the wisdom of my body/heart/spirit); and the ongoing discernment of that fine line between holding on and letting go (which I first explored in depth here).

1) An embodied invitation: taking up the right amount of space.

I have a longstanding fear of being “too much” (which my wife Jennifer reminded me this year is the opposite of the more-common feeling — especially among those socialized as female — of being “not enough”). It feels like I’ve spent my whole life trying to contort myself to make others more comfortable with me. My size, my manners of speech, the way my brain works, the things that interest me, the passion with which I pursue things. I don’t actually think I’m too much… but I’m very aware that I have that impact on people.

I’ve framed this inquiry in recent years as my quest to take up the right amount of space: not the shrinking I’m accustomed to (taking up less than what is properly mine), nor the entitled expanding I’ve been socialized into (taking up more than is properly mine). I credit Emily Athena with helping me crystallize this intention: it’s about a somatic softening. About settling down and back into my body after I speak an invitation, to signal to my partner that it’s safe to take up space (recognizing that their experience has taught them that it’s not safe to take up space, especially with people who look like me).

2) Transformation… with tenderness: acceptance before change.

I’m drafting a newsletter post now where I’ll unpack this in more detail, but it’s relaxing my focus on transformation to first sit with what is: to extend care, tenderness, compassion, and even love… before extending an invitation to transformation. Practically I think this looks like more intentionally connecting at the level of needs (following the teachings of Nonviolent Communication) and honoring the pain and good intentions that led people to adopt their current coping mechanisms/strategies: to really show empathy and compassion for how they arrived at this place, and to spend more time witnessing their humanity.

I haven’t yet figured out how to land this one in a way that feels authentic/in integrity: I’m not sure I want to let go of the desire for transformation… so maybe it’s just a sequencing. Or maybe there is simply a different posture according to relationship: maybe the way I interact with my loved ones (and myself!) is necessarily different from how I interact with the world… I’m not sure yet.

3) Surrender… to other people’s gifts and power.

This is another theme I’ve been exploring for a couple years. This was the result of my search for a positive/active attribute to describe “following” (as opposed to leading): I came to believe that the quality I was seeking was experiencing other people’s power, their gifts. While I desperately want this — and experience it as a joy and relief when I access it — it’s also very difficult for me. It’s trusting that others can care for themselves, for me, and for the whole (I, We, World)… and offer a path through that can attend to everyone’s needs.

And of course these themes are all interrelated: people need to feel accepted/worthy before they can feel safe to take up space; they need to trust that my invitation is sincere and noncoercive before they can share; they need to feel my willingness to let go, to surrender, to trust that their gifts are truly welcome.

Places to practice: containers and communities

So… how am I going to go about this? I want to practice all three in the relationships that are most important to me: in my identities as a father, a husband, a partner, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a colleague, a leader, a teammate, a follower... a human.

In addition to those domains (and with some specific intentions for how I show up in each) there are a few containers I’m considering this year.

1. Intentional exploration of entheogens/psychedelics as a tool for transformation and de-centering my brain. I’d like to work with a therapist/guide/facilitator to shape some specific intentions inside of this work (some combination of the three named above, connected to specific relationships that are important to me). This is specifically about getting out of my head (psilocybin in particular turns off the brain’s default mode network, which I find incredibly compelling; MDMA helps open heart-space and compassion). I’m also giving serious consideration to attending Burning Man for the first time this year (not necessarily in conjunction with plant medicine, but as an effort to connect in community with people oriented toward embodied transformation).
2. Continued exploration of the erotic as a domain of embodiment and surrender. This was a primary domain of practice for me in 2022, and I want to continue to deepen the inquiry. I’m giving serious consideration to doing ISTA Level Two (I did Level 1 last year, and found the experience really powerful), combining the inquiry around eroticism with my inquiry into embodiment and getting out of my head, as well as tapping into the kind of spiritual questions I might be exploring with plant medicine. I continue to believe that there is no domain more intimate and embodied than sex, and want to push myself to practice more letting go in that domain.
3. Relationships with intentionality. I’ve been in this practice for a few years now, and am deepening this year. I like the invitation of the “relationship smorgasbord” as a tool for being thoughtful about the specific qualities I seek in each of my relationships. I find it incredibly liberating to not ask any one person to be everything for me, and to relish the freedom of enjoying what is present in each relationship without lamenting what isn’t. This has been powerful for me in my friendships in particular, but it shows up everywhere. For example, when I think about the kinds of professional collaborations I’m seeking this year, I’m also focusing on what parts of myself I want to grow, what gifts of others I want to experience… and seeking different relationships to work on different things. This is also about honoring my responsibility in the “3 circles” of relationships (which I wrote about here): showing up fully for myself and my partners.

I am fortunate to be supported by skilled somatic therapists, and to have people and communities in my life who are expert in this work… so I get to practice experiencing their gifts :-)

Curating practitioners

Finally, a word on my professional context. In Building Belonging I continue to really value curating cohorts of practitioners as a primary domain both to practice these skills and to advance material change in the world. This year I am prioritizing (open to influence as life unfolds!) four domains of action:

1. Stewarding Building Belonging with our newly-formed sociocratic leadership circle (what sociocracy calls a “general circle.”) This is a place for me to practice all three intentions named above with people I trust and care about, in service of a community and vision we all value.
2. Co-hosting our third philanthropy cohort, in collaboration with Yingzhao Liu and Aisha Shillingford (hopefully launching mid-February). I’m looking forward to leaning into experiencing Aisha and Ying’s gifts here in the art of designing transformational experience, and working with funders eager to transform their practice.
3. Co-convening the launch of Belonging @ Scale (inaugural in-person gathering in July). I love collaborating with Bridgit Antoinette Evans, Staci Haines, and Sanjay Purohit on this question: how to take appropriate responsibility — with humility — for building belonging at the scale this moment requires?
4. Curating a cohort around counter-authoritarian narratives (TBD what form this takes, but I have energy here if I can find the right partners and resources).

An invitation to accountability

I share these intentions in a public forum in part to invite accountability. I can’t do this alone: I will ask those with whom I am in relationship to help me hold myself accountable to my intentions. I want to be pushed, supported, witnessed, and held. I hope you will share resources, ideas, and inspiration about how best to embody these intentions (and if any of these intentions speak to something you’re working on in your life, to walk together on our journey!)

I want to invite others to share your intentions, and how you may wish to be supported in them.

Happy new year, and best wishes for more belonging in 2023!