Step one: Redefine power

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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:

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.

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.

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?

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.

Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

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Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

What does healing mean?

Heading back to wholeness.

Our current cultural norm for masculinity is utterly fragmented—it requires a vivisection of self that is not just unhealthy, but dangerous for everyone.

Men are conditioned to suppress emotions, not show vulnerability, not share their joy and their authenticity, not express themselves in the full spectrum of possibilities. Seeking care or comfort is “for sissies.” They don’t even have the same variety of clothes options women have—simply wearing pink is considered edgy (how in the world did that brainwashery happen?!? So fucking arbitrary.) When they do show any of this, they’re denigrated—for being too feminine.

All of the epithets thrown at men are about the valuelessness of the feminine:

“Don’t be a pussy.” “You cry like a girl.”

What utter bullshit. Completely arbitrary, made-up bullshit. If it were just arbitrary, okay. But the problem is, this does real damage on a huge scale—and not just to women and girls.

The problem is, these parts of ourselves are not just feminine traits of the female gender, they are human needs.

The dominant mainstream indoctrination of masculinity requires men to separate from their humanity. Let this sink in.

This disconnection from self makes men susceptible to being manipulated, and the rage, isolation, and shame they feel are harnessed—because anger is profitable. Because sexism is profitable. Because racism is profitable. Because homophobia is profitable Because shame is profitable. Because divide and conquer is profitable, and it is the oldest trick in the book—because it works.

As bell hooks wrote in her landmark book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, “The first job of patriarchy is to disconnect men from themselves.”

The horror of it all is that shame, isolation, and disconnection breed violence, oppression, and rage.

Sometimes that violence is turned outward and expressed as racism, sexism, homo- and transphobia, degradation of the planet and its creatures, slash-and-burn development, domination, exploitation, hoarding, plain old assholery.

Sometimes, that violence is turned inward and expressed as depression, mental illness, self-harm, or suicide.

Everything we see happening in the world today is utterly predictable.

Disconnecting anyone from themselves results in violence—the only variable is how it manifests.

I consider this a crime against humanity.

The antidote, then? Give men (and everyone) the opportunity to reconnect with themselves. To heal. To love. To love themselves, so they can love others.

What would healing masculinity look like?

  • Embracing the full, healthy range of expression + emotion.

  • Learning how to express anger in healthy ways—not lash out in violence, rage, oppression—so that it can then be transmuted into generative activism.

  • Learning how to regulate the nervous system, especially when it’s stuck in a protracted state of fight, which manifests as dominance, violence, exploitation, overpowering, general assholery.

  • Learning the skills to connect intimately and vibrantly with all of life, not remain detached, apathetic, or scornful of connection.

  • Learning how to discern what one’s needs and desires are, how to communicate them in a healthy way, and how to get them met in a healthy way—so we don’t resort to manipulation, control, or domination to get them met.

  • Discovering what nourishing, regenerative relationships look like—with the earth, our loved ones, communities, and self.

  • Dismantling the idea that growth = accumulation. Accumulation is just more stuff. Sometimes, that’s dead weight, imbalance, or false growth, or growth according to someone else’s beliefs. True growth includes letting go of certain things, as well as expanding in the direction of what we truly love—not what others tell us we should love.

  • Shedding the myth that dominance = power. Dominance is actually a coping mechanism for NOT feeling one’s power. (What a paradigm-shift—the news isn’t that women feel powerful, it’s that MEN DON’T.)

  • Understanding that true power comes from within—that love of self is key to our own power. This may well come with learning how to atone, make amends, forgive, grieve, learn new skills, unearth deep soul desires, share gifts, create joy, create health and a healthy environment.

  • Learning that healthy, aligned masculinity is the perfect complement to healthy, aligned femininity—not its foe, controller, or oppressor, but its potentiator and balancer.

  • Learning that healthy, aligned femininity potentiates and balances the masculine, as well.

  • Knowing that this is a healing path for ALL humans, regardless of gender. That we are all flowing with the energies of masculinity, femininity, androgyny, non-binary, and countless other currents that we can heal and express in healthy ways.

  • That the more we consciously understand and balance these energies, the more personal power we have to navigate and respond to life in healthy, happy ways.

  • Reclaiming joy. Joy is your birthright. Turn it back on, and turn it all the way up. Then share it.

When we can learn new awareness and skills, and cultivate the courage to act on them, life itself becomes our sacred intimate, our partner in potentiation and joy.

That is true power, not toxic power—the kind that heals the self AND the collective in symbiosis. Healing is a collective act.

To heal masculinity, reconnect it.

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If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to read The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks. I wish it were required reading for every human.