Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure”

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Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure.”

Pleasure is a beautiful thing.

Pleasure is built into our bodies.

Pleasure is part of our power as humans.

Pleasure is feedback.

Pleasure is our birthright.

And, there needs to be discernment around when healthy pleasure tips over into unhealthy “pleasure.”

There is a difference between seeking real pleasure—things that nourish, replenish, enliven, and satiate you—and unhealthy pleasure, which is a bottomless numbing mechanism for pain, rather than a movement towards health.

Healthy pleasure satiates and replenishes us—it is balanced.

Unhealthy pleasure is a detour to distract us from pain—which it can’t ever actually fulfill, which is why we always crave more of it. When imbalanced, it can turn into addiction, numbing, distraction, or overindulgence in an attempt to self-soothe.

We do need to self-soothe, but we need to get to the root of just what it is we are actually trying to soothe and address it directly, rather than trying to tamp it down. This is where deep inner work comes in, dealing with our shadows and trauma, and learning new skills for healing and balance.

And, we need to learn to choose healthy, balanced pleasure SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS PLEASURABLE.

We don’t have to justify it. We win no extra points at the end of the game of life for denying ourselves true pleasure. Healthy pleasure is a tool for self-balance; without it, it’s hard not to fall victim to unhealthy pleasure in some way.

How do we discern balanced pleasure from imbalanced gratification?

Imbalanced gratification leaves us wanting more—it is never complete. It never has enough, so we don’t feel lit up by life. We feel anxiety about not getting the thing we’re craving. When we get it, we feel let down—if we don’t numb that feeling, too.

Healthy pleasure makes us feel ALIVE, energized, and connected to life, others, and ourselves. Healthy pleasure is tied to our values, gifts, and deep desires.

Healthy pleasure fills us up WITH OURSELVES, so we feel generous—healthy pleasure wants to be shared. Which means healthy pleasure is healthy not just for you, but for others, too. That is a beautiful thing.

The surprising power of play

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The surprising power of play.

Playing is basically evolution that works well for our nervous systems—not the kind of evolution that requires us to starve, mutate, exhaust ourselves, inflict pain, render ourselves extinct, all that fun stuff. 

• Play is experimentation. 

• Play is iteration.

• Play is pushing past our boundaries.

• Play is creative.

• Play is co-creative.

• Play is strengthening.

• Play helps regulate our nervous systems.

• Play is fun.

• Play strengthens social connection.

• Physical play strengthens our muscles, body language, connection cues.

• Play laughs in the face of judgment--and invites it to play.

• Play dares itself to take it one step too far.

• Play is a way for us to grow and evolve with low stakes. The outcome doesn’t matter—which means we can be open to any possibility arising, rather than trying to control and manage the process so we achieve a predictable process and outcome.

Play is growth mindset.

Predictability, control, managing—these are all excellent things in certain circumstances. And unbelievably boring in others.

You know the phrase, “If you want to make god laugh, tell her your plans?”

I think this is basically the universe’s way of telling us that we are not the boss of her—but she would love to play with us, because she loves a good laugh and loves creating things. 

If you want to grow, PLAY.

If you want to be creative, PLAY.

If you want to evolve, PLAY.

Play answers a surprising number of questions.

How else could the world have ridiculous things like blue-footed boobies and hammerhead sharks and hot-magenta dragonfruit and sloths? There’s a tiny bug on my gardenia with fuzz coming out of its butt—it’s ridiculous. You think these were the a result of serious, controlled work?

No, clearly these are manifestations of the mindset of, “I wonder what happens if I do THIS?”

What if we let go of trying to manage the process, and played through it? Together?

What if we outplayed play?

Want to up the ante?

Practice ridiculosity: ridiculousness at high velocity (I like to make up words, because I love to PLAY).

Don’t underestimate the power of ridiculousness. Go play.

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There’s been a lot of research over the past several years about the importance of play. And one of my favorite books is Deep Play by Diane Ackerman. I highly recommend it!

Step one: Redefine power

Redefine “power” to mean being in love with life. YOUR life.

What would it feel like if you were in love + lust with your life? What would it look like?

What would the world look like if everyone was in love with their lives? What if that was non-negotiable?

I can’t magically make our problems go away. This is not an excuse to turn away from the suffering in the world and what we all need to do to alleviate it.

But I can learn what I love, and hold myself accountable to honoring what I love with my time and energy. I can learn what makes me feel vibrant, and honor that with my time and energy.

I can learn to scale out my perspective so I see how indescribably beautiful the sheer improbability of this planet is.

I can marvel at the craziness of fireflies, and feel a little bit jealous that I can’t do that.

I can do others the honor of asking them what they love, what brings them alive. 

When I allow myself to do what I love, I feel powerful, happy, generous. When I’m filled to overflowing with my own humanity, I want to do that with everyone else.

I happen to think that if we all did this, the world would start healing in bigger and faster ways. And this is totally doable. It’s not everything (or maybe it is), but it’s something.

Joy loves joy. Power loves power. When power is joyful, and joy is powerful, we will have found ourselves smack in the middle of a new paradigm.

Start right now. Some ideas? Glad you asked! Here are a few:

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When someone asks you what you do, tell them what you love.

Then ask them what they love.

What if we were all allies, helping each other to uphold for ourselves what we love, helping us stay true to what we love? What if we were asked many times a day to share what we love, and why? What if what we love is non-negotiable?

We all “do” a million things, play a million roles. I think what you love is the most interesting thing about you. I’d love to know what you love.

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Take off your masks.

We all play a million parts throughout our lives. Often, we put on masks in order to fit into different scenarios, to be acceptable to different people, to be valued by various systems—all of which are playing their parts, as well.

The problem is, we sometimes lose sight of who we truly are beneath our roles and masks.

We play our parts so well, we forget that they are just that: parts.

And when we lose sight of ourselves, we need others to validate our existence, rather than knowing the truth of ourselves—and sharing it—from the inside out.

Who are you without your masks? What would happen if you took them off, one by one? What if vulnerability and transparency was accompanied by relief—relief that you can finally respond to life as YOU, not a small subset of you?

We find ourselves in a strange spacetime in history where we are both starving for connection and inundated with it at the same time.

What we’re craving is not just any and all connection, but authentic, nourishing, pleasurable connection: not surface-level, smush-yourself-down-into-a-box-to-conform empty-calorie connection.

We’re aching for quality, not quantity.

There are those of us who want more of you. There are those of us who want to see all of you, and are waiting for you to reveal the rich facets of who you are so we can play as whole, in-it-all-together human beings.

Trust follows truth.

Connection follows trust.

Authentic connection heals the trauma of disconnection—and of domination masquerading as connection.

Taking off our masks is a great first step.

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Don’t make an impact ON the world, realign with its natural intelligence. And yours.

If you’re reading this, you probably think a lot about where we’re headed as earthlings. I sure do. You know you want to do good, to leave the world a better place. I want that, too.

But I’ve also realized that life wants something from me.

That my intentions, no matter how noble, how visionary, will rapidly become wobbly if I don’t anchor them in what the world needs and desires along with me.

That imposing my vision on the world is a very old-school, will-based, power-over, my way or the highway pattern. It’s all about me. It’s about making my mark, making an impact ON. This is the type of overpowering that happens when we’re actually unsure of our power.

But my relationship with life needs to be consensual.

Playing WITH life, co-creating along with it—that’s the bigger game. That’s the game I want to play. Then it is about me, and also about everyone and everything else. The beauty of this is that, while I might be cultivating my particular vision of a garden, I’m never doing it alone.

Life is telling us what it desires all the time. It is showing us where there are needs all the time. It is giving us opportunities to learn about our deepest desires and gifts all the time (#naps). It is giving us information about what we definitely want no part of all the time (#math).

When we align our natural intelligence—the feedback system of pleasure, pain, love, grief, talent, joy, beliefs, vision—with the natural intelligence of the world, then we will have aligned ourselves with life as it is: a fluid ecosystem continually giving and receiving feedback about how to come back into balance.

This feels much more real than pretending I’m in control of it all.

This is how you co-create an impact FOR the world, with the world.

This feels much more connected to my natural human intelligence, which intuitively and instinctively knows that everything is interdependent, that systems have innate intelligence.

This feels like a relief. Try it out. Let me know how it goes?

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Asking for help is you exercising your agency; it is NOT “victim-mode.”

Enough with the victim-shaming. Asking for help is not the same thing as asking someone to do something for you, it’s asking someone to do something WITH you.

Our true nature is to give, AND to receive. We are not designed to do everything alone.

Do we need to build up our strength, skills, resourcefulness? Absolutely.

Can we be prompted to see and rely on our own power + agency? Absolutely. 

Do we need to rescue everyone? Nope. 

But we need to get real about the fact that there are incredibly difficult circumstances that people need help with. Sometimes, this even means doing something for them.

Telling someone (or yourself) to get out of “survival mode” and into “thriving mode” may be turning a blind eye to the systemic circumstances that perpetuate pain + suffering, and puts all of the burden on the individual to overcome them.

There is a time and place for “thriving mode,” for sure. But we need to be able to discern whether or not our minds, bodies, nervous systems, and external experiences are aligned enough for us to make that transition. If not, we end up stuck and feeling the shame of yet another “failure” to live up to our potential.

Please, be kind with yourself + others. It’s entirely possible that we have within us conflicting parts, some of which are able to thrive, some that aren’t. This is just fine, as long as we don’t bulldoze the parts that aren’t yet ready to shift or glorify the parts that are.

It may be that the “victimy” part desperately longs to know it doesn’t have to do life alone.

We will likely flow in and out if thriving + surviving, victimhood + creatorhood throughout our lives, just because life is life.

We are works in progress, always. So is life. Understanding this might be the most powerful thing you can do for yourself, and others.

Learn from nature’s patterns: torus

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Learn from nature’s patterns: torus

A tree.

A human body.

An earthworm.

The Everything Bagel. (Anyone?)

Perhaps the universe itself.

What do these have in common? 

They’re all examples of the torus, a rotating, regenerative, self-perpetuating… doughnut.

A tree grows up from the ground; as it grows through seasons and cycles, it sheds leaves and disperses rain off its leaves, both of which nourish the roots and soil it needs to continue to grow.

A regenerative, self-nourishing cycle. Its own decay + shed serve its continued growth.

Human bodies, even earthworms do the same thing.

We ingest nutrients, they nourish and sustain us, then we release that sh*t back into the soil to fertilize what we need to grow to continue nourishing us—so the cycle continues. 

So beautifully symbolic. Such rich, earthy wisdom.

How can the pattern of the torus be useful? Ask yourself, in both a literal + metaphorical sense:

• What nourishes you? Are you proactively growing that?

• What do you need to shed in order to continue to grow?

• What healthy, regenerative systems + cycles can you create that continue to supply the nutrients you need without depleting the source?

• What systems and cycles do you see that are NOT self-sustaining?

As we continue to examine nature, nature feeds us back: with foods, beauty, wisdom. 

Regenerative cycles have an innate balance.

How can you find balance in relationship with yourself and the world?

Be the doughnut you wish to see in the world. 

Learn from nature’s patterns: spiral

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Learn from nature’s patterns: spiral

Have you ever noticed that spirals are everywhere?

Snail shells.

Pinecones.

Galaxies.

Flower petals.

Hurricanes. W

hirlpools.

Cabbage.

DNA.

Fingerprints.

Clearly, it’s a pattern that works—physical matter somehow knows how to organize itself this way.

In my mission to NOT recreate the wheel, again, that’s good enough for me.

This is the heart of Creative Rewilding, my sanctuary/launchpad for paradigm shifters:

• Exploring macrocosmic patterns and applying them to our individual circumstances.

• Realigning with the universe’s natural intelligence so we can tap into our own true nature and create what only we can create.

Our desires are what inspire us to journey. Patterns in nature are our guideposts.

There’s a theory of evolution called spiral dynamics that states that growth occurs along a spiral, not a straight line.

A spiral implies movement, but also expansion—it’s not a line drawing over itself, it’s a line expanding incrementally outward as it moves. Over and over again.

The spiral creates itself through repetition. One trip around isn’t a spiral. It needs to repeat the motion—while also expanding.

This pattern helps explain why we as humans repeat patterns—as we move along the spiral, we revisit the same spot, over and over.

BUT—we’re see that spot from different perspectives.

We’re not backsliding, we are seeing the same thing from a different vantage point.

It’s a great lesson in perspective-shifting.

When we can learn how to consciously move along the spiral with curiosity and compassion, examining it can give us incredibly rich information—about ourselves, and about life.

I invite you to play with spirals in your life.

Where are they showing up?

Where are you repeating a pattern, and how could that inform you if you were to look at it from a different perspective?

How are you expanding, even as you repeat motions?

Where are your desires leading you?

If you’re willing to share your insights, I’d love to hear about them! Share in the comments.

Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.

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Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.

One thing I’m clear on is that we don’t need to change the world—we need realign with its natural intelligence.

We are the ones who need to regain our balance.

If we can return to our true nature as creatures who are meant to live in a symbiotic relationship within an ecosystem called Earth, we’ll naturally create healthy, healing communities, practices, systems, environments, and psyches.

Nature’s patterns are guideposts for us—they are feedback for us as we seek balance.

• The reciprocity of ebb and flow, like our friends the tides, the breath, vibration.

• The self-nourishing, regenerative torus, like our friends the trees.

• The spiral of growth and focus, from the snail’s shell to spiral galaxies.

• The fractal of iteration, like the fern’s fronds.

• The exploration and delivery system of branches, like our rivers and arteries.

• The radiance of the radial throwing energy in all directions, from our friends the dandelions to the life-giving sun.

These patterns are repeated, over and over, throughout space and time, from macro to micro.

If these patterns work that well at every scale, for billions of years, I figure they’re good enough for me.

We really don’t need to recreate the wheel, just look around to see what patterns already surround us—and embody them.

One of nature’s most basic patterns is the simple dynamic of ebb and flow.

Growth + rest.

Give + receive.

Spend + replenish.

Day + night.

Yin + yang.

Expansion + contraction.

Summer + winter.

Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking of these as polarities. They are simply different parts of a circuit, a self-healing cycle that balances itself as it moves through the journey. A beautiful balance of reciprocity and symbiosis.

What if we could embody the full pattern ourselves? What if we didn’t shame the contraction, the need for rest, the shadows in the dark as enemies locked in battle with their opposites, but rather saw them as integral parts of an ongoing process?

Not saboteurs, simply agents of balance.

Try it out: play with ebb and flow.

Where is your life in flow?

Where is it in ebb?

Where might you need to spend more time or energy in order to find your own balance?

Honor your cycles and seasons as journeys you get to walk, not fixed destinations—there is simply no such thing in a universe as dynamic as ours.

Rediscover your true nature by reconnecting to nature’s patterns. Tell me how it goes? I’d love to know!

Dare to meet life intimately

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Dare to meet life intimately.

Life will only be as fulfilling as the depth with which we’re willing to meet it.

Surface-level connections will fulfill us… at the surface.

But our depths crave intimacy and sharing. Intimacy craves depth, not masks and walls.

What if we stopped holding life at arm’s length?

What if we entered into an intimate relationship with all that is?

What if we were willing to walk through life…

… holding everything with care and protection

… seeing fully

… being seen fully

… open

… being opened

… sharing

… embracing what is, not what we think should be

… releasing masks and performance

… touching and being touched

… loving wholeheartedly

… being moved by life?

The tragedy is that we’ve narrowed down the idea of “intimacy” to something that only happens behind closed doors. (Another tragedy is that sex does not necessarily include intimacy—sometimes, it’s anything but.)

But why not be intimate in every realm of our lives? 

Why not share deeply during lunchtime?

Why not be willing to be moved by a random conversation in line at the drugstore?

Why not hold with care what you see on your walk?

Intimacy is everywhere, if we have the courage to meet it: a type of quantum entanglement that thrills in knowing us—as we know ourselves—more and more fully.

An intimate life is a gift to humanity.

Why not live life as if it were a love letter to the planet?

The importance of showing up messy

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The importance of showing up messy

I’m someone who, for the most part, has been able to show up well in my life. I’m pretty presentable. I know how to play well with others. I can get the job done. Not always perfectly, not always the best, but good enough.

One May day in 2020, I woke up and everything changed. I had a cerebrospinal fluid leak, which caused by brain to sag, which prompted a cascade of neurological and physical degeneration over the next 13 months. It was awful, and terrifying. It screwed up my life, and my nervous system. I was conscious, but my brain would fade in and out constantly. I cried and catastrophized frequently, methods my body and brain used to try to find regulation. I was a complete mess. I felt like I was losing my tether to my body and this planet.

Interestingly, I could still show up, albeit in a diminished way. I could still have conversations. I could still garden or make art, some days. I could smile and laugh, sometimes. I grieved with some friends who were also going through difficult challenges. I even navigated the sh!tshow that is health insurance. I was just a complete mess while I did it all.

And this was an important lesson for me:

I’ve learned that showing up messy doesn’t diminish my intelligence.

I’ve learned that showing up in grief doesn’t lessen my impact.

I’ve learned that showing up in tears doesn’t mean I can’t get things done.

I’ve learned that showing up even though I’m a mess doesn’t mean I care any less.

I’ve learned that showing up inconsistently is sometimes me giving 100%.

I’ve learned that showing up scared is actually pretty courageous.

If anything, these messy, inconvenient states remind me of why I’m showing up in the first place: to help and to care, and to normalize helping, caring, grieving, healing—in all realms of our lives. Even when we’re a mess.

This doesn’t mean I don’t need days of respite and solitude—I do.

This doesn’t mean I should push through everything, no matter what—it doesn’t.

This doesn’t mean it’s always a great idea to show up messy—it isn’t.

But there are a lot of stories floating around about how we should “never let them see you sweat,” that emotions are unprofessional, that grief is something to be dealt with… somewhere else, some other time, if at all: we don’t really make time or space for grief—or people experiencing it—in our culture. (And look into the origins of “professionalism” and ask yourself if just maybe we need to update the concept.)

At times, these ideas held me back from showing up, because I didn’t feel I measured up—that my mess, emotional state, ill health, inconsistency was a burden, one to be borne alone, by myself.

But really, these stories are just telling us to turn off our humanity.

To keep us alone, isolated, or shamed by our humanness when we most need to connect with others in it.

To keep the machine running.

I’m not at all interested in performing like a machine. I just can’t live down to that expectation.

I’m bringing human back—to all the places we’ve been told it’s too imperfect to work.

These might just be the spaces we need it most.

And in return…

We need to get comfortable with others showing up messy.

There is a lot going on on the planet. Too much.

If we’re going to move through these times with our humanity intact, we have to create compassionate space for falling apart—for ourselves, and for others.

This can’t be relegated solely to the realm of therapy, counseling, or self-development.

Grief, illness—they don’t care about our timelines. Q4 is irrelevant.

Grief and illness are the disruptive technologies meant to jolt us back into our humanness, and they will show up when and where they please. Maybe in the middle of a Tuesday.

And—if our systems can’t accommodate our humanness… remind me, what is the point of them?

We need leaders in every arena to learn and model how to hold grief, illness, and nervous system dysregulation humanely.

We all need to learn how to do this. There is a lot of grieving and caregiving to be done; this will be anything but convenient.

I truly believe that in some not-so-distant future, organizations will be evaluated by how well they are willing and able to embrace this.

We can’t turn a blind eye to the magnitude of change occurring. I’m not the only one who had a rough few years. Many went through worse than I did, or have been dealing with it for far longer.

It’s an invitation for us all to lean into our humanity, re-learn how to be fully human, and recalibrate our systems so they are in alignment with our full humanness—together.

This is the heart of humanful leadership: our capacity to hold one another in the full spectrum of our humanity—not just the sanitized parts.

It’s a mess. Hold on. Embrace it. And each other.

To heal masculinity is to honor femininity

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To heal masculinity is to honor femininity.

As much as we need to heal masculinity, we need to honor + elevate femininity.

It’s no secret that humans are terrified of the feminine. She has been subjugated, abused, mocked, erased, silenced, burned, buried, violated for so long we no longer see the myriad ways this continues.

After all, the feminine is the great unknowable force—the dark, tangled chaos of pure potential, rather than the clean lines of what’s already known.

She’s the creativity that disrupts the assembly line.

The sensuality that disrupts untouchable order.

The intuition that disrupts reason.

The empathy that disrupts the need for violence.

She f*cks with predictable profits of arbitrary systems.

But because masculinity has not been healed, still a shadow of what it could be—though it is finally in the process of healing—it has not had the balls to meet her where she is: to be potentiated by the full force of the feminine.

Worse, masculinity KNOWS it has chosen the smaller game, and hates her for it. And so, it has tried to make her go away.

We only dominate what we fear. And whatever gets dominated has no choice but to grow stronger in order to survive.

Plot twist, baby.

Clean, rational lines haven’t gotten us what we need—nor has oppressing the feminine or celebrating the imbalanced boy-masculine.

Healthy, happy lives need more dimension: more diversity, more creativity, more intuition, more body, more empathy, more expression, more color, more connection, more nurturing, more daring. More damn sunlight, clean water, rich earth. More possibility.

We need healthy masculinity to MEET—not subdue or submit to—healthy femininity in order to feel our human power + align fully with life.

As we potentiate ourselves, we need to embed the healthy feminine into our systems: our familial systems, our economic systems, governments, businesses, processes, methods, coding, data, narratives, science—to align them with the full spectrum of life, not just profits.

And life is the gift of the feminine: Real, embodied, shifting, emergent, entangled life. A high-quality life worth living + loving. 

Welcome to the divine feminine. She sees you, and she raises you—because she longs to be fully MET in her full power.

What it means to be humanful

Fill yourself up until you are overflowing with your own humanity. Be humanFUL.

When we are satiated by the fullness of our own humanity—when we are “humanful”—we then get the pleasure of pursuing not just what we lack, but what we truly desire.

Can you feel that tipping point where acting to fill a void tips over into sharing excitement and desire from a place of fullness? That’s our sweet spot.

But… how do we fill ourselves up?

By being fully human:

Filling our senses with healthy pleasures.

Spending our energy on what feeds us back: healthy food, water, movement, authentic connection, beauty, awe.

Healing.

Resting.

Playing.

Co-creating.

Fueling our passions, core values, and deep desires.

Fostering healthy relationships, ones in which we all get to be exactly who we are and who we aren’t.

Expanding our definition of “human” to include the environment that supports us, grows us, and nourishes us, to include all the other earthlings, flora and fauna alike, in our interconnected web of life.

Nourishing them back, so they can continue to nourish us.

Wondering.

Sharing.

Giving and receiving. 

To know ourselves and to honor ourselves is to fill ourselves up.

When you are full of yourself in the healthiest way possible, then please—GIVE the gift of yourself.

You—yes, you—are the gift you are meant to give.

Be an earthling. Love earth. Act accordingly.

In a universe where everything is interdependent, we are made human by our connection to all that is.

We’re not human perched on top of all that is. We did not evolve in some hermetically sealed capsule.

We evolved WITH all the other earthlings—saltwater, cicadas, orchids, worms, hawks, gazillions of bugs, maples, giraffes, amethyst, groundhogs, fire, dust, dew, whale sharks, waterfalls.

All of it.

We take in tiny remnants of it all every single time we breathe, eat, see, hear, touch.

The word “human” has its roots in the Latin “humus,” which means earth. We are of the earth.

When the earth changes, we change. When we change, the earth changes. We all have our place, and when one thing changes, all things do.

The only way to truly be happy and healthy is to love and respect ourselves, others, and everything.

If we are made human by all that is, we must love earth and all the other beings who share this planet (and universe, and multiverse, and…) in order to be fully human. Humanful.

I’ve started using the word “humanful,” because to me, it feels like filling ourselves up with our own humanity—in the largest sense of our human earthlingness, connected in a reciprocal relationship to all that is—not the small, arbitrarily separate sense.

When we are full to overflowing with ourselves—not in some unhealthy, ego-based narcissism, but in knowing and feeding our own generative, divine fire because it is also earth’s fire—it’s so much easier to find balance, generativity, and generosity, and spill that over into loving everything else.

It’s so much easier to find our purpose.

I think the purpose of humans is to be fully healthy, happy humans, because I happen to think that that works out well for everything else.

To me, this is how we define our humanity: by remembering and loving our true nature and our place here as earthlings—entangled with everyone and everything else.

Humanful.

The best tool I ever learned

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Replace judgment with curiosity.

This is one of the best tools I ever learned.

Instead of immediately adding my judgment to a situation, if I add curiosity I can expand my understanding—and if I can expand my understanding, I might be able to help transform a problem, instead of just being ticked off about it.

So, instead of:

“What a dumb idea, I can’t believe they did that, what a nincompoop!”

It becomes:

“How interesting that they are a nincompoop. I wonder why?”

(This also applies to my own nincompoopery. And to yours.)

This helps me to see the factors at play that produced said nincompoopery: the conditions, desires, and needs that led someone to believe nincompoopery was their best option.

And when I can understand that the behavior was a result of a variety of factors—and have compassion for it—I can start to imagine how to shift some of the factors that perpetuate nincompoopery, and OFFER OTHER POSSIBILITIES.

(To be clear: This does not mean we excuse or tolerate bad behavior. I’ve said this before, and I’ll continue to say it: just because we can become aware of the conditions that led someone to choose bad behavior—or worse, violence, abuse, destruction, neglect—does not mean anyone is absolved of their actions. We are all accountable for our actions. And, the only way to change behavior is to offer other options—when we can practice curiosity, we can better fathom off-ramps from destructive behavior and provide alternatives.)

Curiosity is generative. Judgment is not.

There’s a time and place for judgment—but there are so many things that need the fuel of curiosity to help drive actual transformation.

More often than not, judgment is stagnant; it stops the exploration, and the evolution. Judgment is seductive—it feels good to judge someone for bad behavior, like we’re aligning with the high ground. The problem is, it rarely spurs change. And if you truly want real change, then judgment just isn’t the right tool.

Next time you find yourself judging—someone, something, or yourself—see if you can add curiosity to see what conditions produced the thing you’re judging.

This is where the wiggle room is. And wiggle room provides the off-ramp from nincompoopery.

This is how we act in partnership with what life is actually presenting, rather than what we think it SHOULD be presenting and judging it for not doing that. And acting in partnership with reality is the only way to shift it.

How to practice partnership

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How to practice partnership

The first step to practicing partnership is realizing that you are already in partnership—with everyone and everything.

Everything in the universe is interdependent.

You are in a partnership with yourself: your body, your mind, your spirit.

You are in a partnership with other humans, and with their bodies, minds, and spirits.

You are in partnership with communities, institutions, ecosystems.

You are in partnership with the planet.

We all are. What would it look like if we all acted like good, conscious partners to elevate and nourish each other and the planet, rather than individuals jockeying for rank and position perched on top of a randomly spinning sphere?

Sometimes, we forget that every possible thing in the entire multiverse is connected.

That WE are connected to everything.

That every act and thought has ripple effects in the immediate and over billions of years. (Or, that perhaps there is no time and it’s all just happening NOW.) That every possibility is right here, right now. 

That every action has a reciprocal reaction.

What we do for ourselves, we do for others. What we do for others, we do for ourselves. I think the Golden Rule must have danced with the laws of thermodynamics.

We can’t know all the arcs of every story we’re connected to.

But we can make sure that the fundamental pattern of reciprocity is the basis of our relationships: with ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, our systems, our planet.

This isn’t just stuff for the meditation mat, this is our blueprint for taking action in alignment with all that is.

We are living in a sorely divided world; forgetting that we are all connected, and fearing that connection, are taking a massive toll.

What if connection felt amazing, not unsafe?

What if sharing what we love wasn’t used as a way to manipulate us, but as a way to see where we’re the same, AND where we’re different—and celebrating all of those perspectives?

What if re/membering connection helps us realize that we are IN THIS with every other thing, and that we better take care of ourselves and our world, because it’s all US?

If this sounds like a lot, start with yourself. Love yourself. Hold yourself accountable to what you love. Hold yourself accountable for your nincompoopery.

Hold humanity accountable to its humanness—to its great capacity to love, and to eff things up—and to the idea that maybe if we loved outrageously all the freakin’ time instead of rationing it, there’d be less nincompoopery to deal with.

And if you’re ready for next-level partnership?

Invite others to elevate their game along with you.

Steel sharpens steel.

Vibrant, joyful, creative humans love playing with other vibrant, joyful, creative humans.

It’s how we evolve past our own edges and see new possibilities.

How we potentiate ourselves and each other.

How we feel the fullness of our humanity.

How we create a new paradigm by embodying the power of being fully human WITH others, FOR others.

Daring to be fully human with others—and with the planet, not just on it—is how we evolve.

If you’re a visionary who wants to co-create a more beautiful world, not leave it behind—let’s elevate.