Wanna know one of my secret weapons against shame?
It works like a charm.
And I almost never see it discussed.
It’s this.
Low expectations.
Wait what?
Let me explain.
I think, in the Western world — though this phenomenon is not unique to the West, I think it is particularly salient here — people are constantly fed a steady stream of “the myth of human perfectibility.”
I think it comes from Christianity — or the way Christianity has become distorted, depending on whom you ask — with all its obsession with goodness and purity and achieving salvation from our natural state of ‘sinfulness’.
The idea that the human being ought to be perfected, and that we can achieve this through doing enough of the right things, or believing enough in the right things… is one to question.
When you think perfection/purity is attainable, and that it must be attained by doing/believing “correctly,” life is a constant stressful battle.
Because we will always run into our own shortcomings, weaknesses, and failure.
No human being — save for psychopaths or narcissists — is immune from the constant experience of facing all that is imperfect about us.
But I have a very different view of humanity, and therefore myself.
I take it for granted that I’m not that great.
There are big parts of me that are insecure, angry, entitled, hypocritical, craven, selfish, resentful, greedy, and just plain stupid.
(Before you say “Simone don’t call yourself stupid!,” here’s a simple but good example: have I drunk-driven? Yes. Fucking stupid. I don’t do it anymore but I do other, maybe equally stupid things from time to time.)
And these parts of me are not going away no matter how hard I try because I am human.
Therefore, I have created, and will continue to create scenarios in which I’m the idiot, I’m the weak link, and I’m the cause of pain for myself and others.
If I forget or deny these aspects of myself for a long time, something will happen in life that remind me and humble me.
And I say NONE of this with shame, or out of self-hatred or smallness.
Humans are profoundly paradoxical. At the same time that I am all these unpleasant things, I am also brilliant, generous, kind, wise, delightful, an awe-inspiring spark of unspeakable love and beauty.
I believe in ALL OF THE ABOVE at the same time.
See? Paradox. Humans contain the entire mind-boggling complexity of the universe. That’s what’s so wonderful and terrible about us.
But because I embrace the full spectrum of the paradox of humanity, I am not surprised by all the shitty parts of me, and my life.
I have thought, felt, and done things in the past that are so unwise, short-sighted, immature, and/or hateful that they created enormous shame for myself which I’ve never talked about with any other human being, let alone the public.
The understanding that this is not a unique thing that is happening to ME and ME only, and that the searing burn of facing one’s own profound shortcoming is a universal HUMAN experience, is what allowed me to let go of the shame.
This is how low expectations (a.k.a. “i was never supposed to be that great anyway”) freed me.
Because shame says “YOU are bad.”
And the truth is, being human just includes a lot that feels really bad. Even that person who you think is so perfect and has all their shit together and just glides through life… has their own share of unspeakable pain about their own fallibility and shortcomings that you’ll never know about.
It’s not personal.
That is enormously important to know.
I’m not above profoundly hurting other people. Because that’s a feature of being human.
I’m not above humiliating, dirt-in-my-teeth failure. Because that’s a feature of being human.
I’m not above making stupendously bad decisions — like, again and again. Because that’s a feature of being human. (There’s never, ever a point in which you permanently graduate from that for as long as you’re alive.)
These are somber, sobering truths. But it’s much better to contend with somber, sobering truths than the life-annihilating lie of shame.
Also, it is vitally important to remind myself — aggressively and vigorously sometimes — of the full weight of the OPPOSITE truth, of my goodness, beauty, brilliance, preciousness, etc.
I do this specifically and insistently.
I seek out people and spaces that make it easy for me to embody that awareness.
If you don’t balance both ends of the paradox, not only do you just get depressed, you also move away from the fundamental truth of your existence.
Another important point: the drama of dealing with shame is intensified when you’re neurodivergent, sensitive, struggle with mental health, and/or have some kind of circumstance/identity that lands you in the margins of society (like being poor or trans, etc).
Though no one is immune to the pain of Being Alive While Imperfect, it certainly is easier to pad yourself against the full awareness or full consequences of your “crunchy” sides when you have a lot of unearned advantages. (Like… for example, making mistakes while being poor and Black is a lot more ‘expensive’ than making mistakes when you’re wealthy and white. Obviously.)
That’s another thing to factor in when you’re dealing with shame. There are structural, systemic forces that determine how much “raw material” of shit you’re given to work through.
I am a vagina-owner, a person of color and descendant of colonized people, and have an ADHD brain that is prone to anxiety and depression. That means I have a lot of easy shame-triggers.
It’s like, I got the “harder” level of the same video game that a lot of other people got. But I am acutely aware that also, many many other people have to play way, way harder levels because they don’t have the privileges i do.
I’m posting this because recently, I’ve been talking to some folks about the feeling of overwhelming shame they feel about their financial circumstances.
It’s not just the stress and grief of dealing with financial precariousness. It’s the shame of “IT’S MY FAULT, I BROUGHT THIS UPON MYSELF, I SHOULD HAVE ____ AND SHOULDN’T HAVE ____, HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID.”
That’s what really kills.
But, I offer you… why should you have “known”? Why should you have “done better”?
You are not superhuman or God. You do not have perfect foresight, knowledge or willpower. You do not have infinite reserves of energy, creativity and wisdom. NO ONE DOES. Those features don’t come installed in the human package.
You are fallible and the world isn’t necessarily set up to help everyone feel safe and secure. In fact, many would argue that it’s actively rigged to fuck a lot of people over.
It’s not you. It’s not you. It’s not you.
At least, it’s not uniquely you.
Having this awareness doesn’t solve everything. But it certainly helps to lighten the emotional load. And sometimes, that counts for a lot.
Because shame sucks.
And you deserve to have your load lightened.
I don’t even think it’s technically true to say that everyone is doing their best, and therefore YOU were doing your best…
But I also think NOT always having the capacity to “do your best” IS part of us trying to do our best.
Life is hard.
You deserve grace.
You deserve the most compassionate and affirming narratives about the painful stuff in your life.
You deserve infinite second chances.
You deserve to feel like your existence is deeply good and that you matter profoundly.
Let me first say that I don’t think avoiding depression is just a matter of having the right mindset and making the right choices.
Sometimes you can make a 200% effort to do your best to do the “right” things and still be at the mercy of relentlessly cruel brain chemicals.
I think it is both inaccurate, unscientific and unkind to suggest that you can just mindset and action your way out of depression.
Not only that, but external circumstances matter.
To be sure, positive external circumstances can’t 100% control depression. But it sure as hell helps when you’re in a physically comfortable environment, don’t have to worry about your own survival, have disposable income (so you can take a vacation to a warmer place or get a massage or hire a cleaner if that would be supportive) and are surrounded by people who love you and support you unconditionally.
Many of these aren’t only available to all.
So what I’m about to say isn’t some kind of prescriptive guide of what you “should” do to “beat depression”.
I’m way too humble about the reality of brains. Mine in particular. Even at my most upbeat, happy and energetic (which I often am), I always feel at a razor’s edge from mental illness because I am extremely sensitive and melancholy by nature.
So this is just one story of someone who is experiencing a dark season of life, and deduce that certain things have helped her to avoid depression this time.
The biggest thing for me has been this.
The way to cope with losing your sense of purpose, direction and ambition is to find out who you are outside of those things.
Because we humans are so much more than our so-called “purpose,” “direction” and “ambition” — as defined in an individualistic and capitalist sense (as they usually are.)
And this is a place of liberation.
When I don’t have some kind of grand “purpose in the world”, my purpose is to exist today.
To be alive. To breathe. To make my bed.
To order a sandwich and eat it. To notice snowflakes falling softly on trees.
To send memes to my bestie to make her laugh.
To cuddle with my sweetheart. To feel my emotions, to cry, to take walks, to read poems.
This is actually what real life mostly consists of. Our real purpose is to be alive, and here we are, beautifully and perfectly fulfilling it.
When I’ve lost connection to a capitalist-individualist sense of direction, then I get to…
… exist without direction, which gives me a great freedom.
Children don’t need direction to play. They just follow their own impulses (which often subvert adult “directions”) and have the best time.
Artists don’t need direction to create. Like, nobody was telling Picasso “mix this color with that color and put a brushstroke HERE.” Artists respond, once again, to their own inner creative impulse — moment by moment. Not unlike play.
When I no longer have ambition, I get to be free.
Free from the prison of my worldly identity and pursuits. Because, no matter how much value I find in work, I know I’m so much more than that.
I’m an animal. I am a dream-spark of my ancestors. I’m a river of sexual energy. I’m quantum potential in a meatsuit. I am one with soil, sap and sky. I am a tiny node in the sacred unbroken web of living beings.
All of these things are so much bigger and truer and deeper than anything I can do with “ambition.”
Let me be clear…
This doesn’t mean it’s been easy and delightful for me. It hasn’t.
Almost everyday is phenomenally uncomfortable and I’ll be VERY glad when some semblance of purpose, direction and ambition return to me. (And they will. Because life consists of cycles.)
But everything I’ve just mentioned has been the difference between “oh fuck, my life is just falling apart” and “I’m undergoing vitally important spiritual journey — one that is critical for my ability to come home to my true nature.”
This awareness has reminded me again and again… that shedding isn’t a loss.
It’s a revelation.
Disintegration isn’t a disaster.
It’s a cleansing.
“Unmoored” isn’t “lost”.
It’s a liberation.
And contrary to how it feels sometimes, the universe isn’t here to just fuck you.
When there is a night, it leads to day.
When there is a winter, it leads to spring.
When there is an uphill, there is a downhill.
Everything is unfolding for a reason, and there is a great unseen benevolent loving order behind it all.
This isn’t some kind of objective truth I’m proclaiming, but a personal belief I hold.
On purpose. By choice.
Deep rigorous optimism in the goodness of the universe is as close to something gets to a religious belief for me.
It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.
Because we live in a universe that loves us. And how I know that is that I AM a microcosm of the universe, and I AM love.
And that is how, despite a ton of discomfort, I have not been depressed.
This time.
Spoken as someone who will never hesitate to go out and get some prescription drugs if I feel like that would be supportive.
I’m not here to toot my own horns and talk about how great I am.
Because 1. that’s not the point of why we’re here, and 2. The quality of my work should be evidenced by the change it makes in YOUR lives, not by me talking about how great I am.
But there’s something I need to tell you that you might never know because the information is intentionally obscured from you.
I know of almost no one in the online business coaching who makes revenue at the range that I have for the past 5 years (well over 10 million, haven’t done the exact math)….
… who spends on ads a little as I do (I spend almost nothing because I never bought into the idea that it was some kind of magic solution and anyway, it always felt so boring to try to work on it)…
… who has as few business expenses as I do (because I have an incredibly lean team and business structure, and we simplify and bootstrap almost everything, which means I spend money on almost nothing except things that directly impact client experiences, like accessibility)…
… and therefore has as high a profit margin as I do (i almost never take home less than 70% of my total revenue, and that number would be even higher if I didn’t insist on paying my people extremely well)…
… while working with a team who shows up for me and has my back like we’re family…
… while also having a sliding scale pricing system and especially in the past couple years, no reliance on high ticket offers…
…. while also using my platform vigorously and unapologetically for social justice issues and fundraising for those causes.
I say this NOT to toot my own horn but to let you know there are ways to make money AND THEN THERE ARE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY.
The “how” you buy into matters enormously in terms of your mental health, quality of life, and how much money you actually end up with in your pocket.
Juggling complex systems, lots of hiring and outsourcing, fancy bells and whistles that project an illusion of success, prioritizing short term cash, constantly looking to giant-corporation-dependent “conversion” processes (like ads) to save you may make you money… but at what cost?
You can train your own mind to be the most powerful tool you have for business growth.
You can partner with your own spirit to get the highest-quality guidance about where to go next. Better than any fancy consultant you can hire.
You can nourish your human-to-human relationships with honesty, generosity and genuine care so that your community becomes your very insurance against ever-volatile trends.
Not all business coaching is built the same.
Trust what feels right and good to your heart.
Know that you can have a good business, do good for the world, and be surrounded by a community of people who pay you AND are with you, through thick and thin, for the long haul because they’re primarily invested in your HEART, not your transactions.
In our culture, it is so common to use LIGHT as a metaphor for all that is good, healthy, civilized, and virtuous.
And, conversely, DARKNESS as a metaphor for all that is bad, sick, uncivilized and sinister.
You may not be surprised to hear that associations not only have done enormous harm to people with melanated skin across the globe (by justifying racism)…
… but they have also created distortions in our relationships to our bodies and nature.
If you’re used to associating “light” with good…
Consider that: withholding darkness from people is literally a torture technique. Nonstop light, leading to sleep deprivation, is designed to break people down.
24/7 light would kill species and destroy ecosystems.
And while light in and of itself is natural (hello, the sun), light pollution — an unnatural excess of light — is doing enormous harm to humans and the ecosystem.
Fetuses grow in the dark.
All life is nourished by dark soil.
Dreaming happens in the dark — as well as transcendant and liminal visions.
There’s a reason that so many artists, writers, spiritual leaders and visionaries are night owls. Darkness reveals what light obscures.
Now, I’d love to invite you to read some excerpts from an article I just found:
“Should we avoid liturgical language of light and dark?” written by Steve Thorngate, for The Christian Century magazine.
(Be assured, this is enormously relevant even if you have nothing to do with Christanity.)
It said so many things so more eloquently that I could at this moment.
There is a long history in the church of using words like light, white, bright, and fair to connote goodness in a straightforward way and words like dark, black, shade, and dim to connote the opposite.
Most instances of such usage were not written for explicitly racist purposes (though some were). Still, this language has thrived alongside racism in White-dominated church contexts.
And language—especially ritual language, repeated again and again—has great power among those who speak or hear it, power not constrained by the intent of its creators.
The Bible is chock-full of light/dark imagery, with much (though not all) of it presenting light as the positive side of the coin.
Jesus is the light of the world, the morning star, the one who obviates the need for lamp or sunlight, the one in whom there is no darkness at all. Forgiveness for sin washes us whiter than snow.
And then, over on the other side of things, there’s the power of darkness. Why should the church avoid this language the biblical writers use so freely?
Yes, praise for the light is all over scripture… but the Bible says lots of things, and not all of them find their way into our liturgies.
Christian views of scripture vary, and I know there are those who maintain that “Is this biblical?” is the main hurdle for any idea or phrase to clear. But I have yet to visit a church that follows this principle through to its logical conclusion, giving every jot and tittle a hearing on Sunday morning.
So the mere existence of a light versus dark paradigm in the Bible hardly seems like the last word on its suitability for worship.
After all, the plain fact is that some biblical language can be hurtful to some people among us. It has been used to buttress concrete harm in the past, still is in some places, and even where it isn’t the words themselves can be a significant stumbling block.
So while addressing this fact might not be simple or straightforward, we do need to address it. “Deal with it, it’s in the Bible” is inadequate; it fails to take the problem seriously.
So does this mean we should jettison the language of light and darkness entirely? I’m not sure it does.
This language, after all, is more than biblical: it’s elemental. It names a fundamental experience of all living things.
The earth’s days and seasons are defined by the planet’s relationship with the sun’s rays—their presence and absence, the distance they travel to reach us, and the angle at which they arrive.
These cycles of darkness and light have shaped creatures, ecosystems, and communities across generations and continents, and the depth of this shared reality makes it a rich source for liturgical language.
Christian liturgy forms us in no small part by defining the passage of time in our lives. This means it is deeply invested in the role of darkness and light in the life of the planet we live on.
The challenge I faced in my songwriting project was how to explore light/dark language with care, embracing its richness and depth—while also seeking to avoid the harm it can do.
I’m considerably less certain that the particular guidelines I came up with are the best available. No doubt there’s much to quibble with and refine here. But here’s what I tried…
1) Consider the various senses in which positive language about light is used. Light can mean illumination, vision, transparency, openness, the revealing of secrets—ideas rooted in the physical function and utility of light. Explore these with care. Light can also connote color, complexion, innocence, and even cleanness—more immediately value-laden ideas that can be dangerous, especially when paired with binary language like light/dark. Avoid these.
2) Be especially cautious about negative language for darkness. Yes, it’s logically implicit in positive language about light, and some will argue that there is thus no meaningful difference between the two. But I’m convinced that it also matters what we make explicit, what we say out loud and emphasize and repeat—a point that became clearer to me as I wrote things like song refrains and they echoed in my mind. It is possible to use positive light language—and again, some forms of it are more worthwhile than others—while also taking care not to actively disparage darkness.
3) Ask, in a given situation, if you need to use language about light and darkness at all. Is what you’re saying important to your larger purposes, or are you just trying to pad an illustration or fill out a metrical line? If it is important, is there another way to say it that works just as well? The sort of qualified embrace I’m advocating implies a need to make each usage count.
4) Don’t use black/white language to mean bad/good. Just don’t do it (even though it’s biblical). The racist interpretation is too immediate, too easy to infer. Find another way to say what you want to say.
5) Perhaps most importantly: say positive things about darkness. Fertile soil is dark. A dark sky without light pollution promotes healthy rest and, paradoxically, visibility. Secrets and mysteries aren’t always bad things; their illumination isn’t always good.
What’s more, the biblical witness is not unanimously pro-light.
In Exodus 20 God occupies a space of darkness, in Genesis 15 God arguably takes the form of darkness, and the psalmist praises the protection provided by God’s shadow. In recent years, Christians have begun to write liturgical texts on such themes. There’s even a new children’s book, God’s Holy Darkness… (“Creation began in the dark. . . . Creation is God’s work done in holy darkness.”) We need more of this in the church.
6) Embrace the fact that liturgical images exist in tension with one another. The goal is not a tidy, closed system of what light/dark language is allowed to mean. Our metaphors proliferate, overlap, and sometimes even conflict. This is OK. Here I take my cues from the expansive language movement around God and gender: we need to imagine our way to a longer and better list of ways to use light/dark language in worship, rather than restrict our way to a shorter and safer one.
I’ve found these guidelines useful, but they remain a work in progress.
You can read the full text of this article, if you google the words “light dark Thorngate.” It will be the top search result.
So much of this applies directly to larger Western culture, which is formed in such large part by Christianity.
If you work in coaching or healing arts, where these metaphors are commonly used, what is your takeaway from this?
Take a break from seeing yourself through others’ perceptions.
For too many of us, we barely have a relationship with ourselves outside of the stories, identities, judgments and standards that others — and society at large — have imposed on us.
Seriously, set apart some time — a week, a day, or even an hour — and tell yourself:
“For this time, I will BE instead of BE PERCEIVED. I will claim my freedom from the label, the descriptor, the box they tried to squeeze me into.”
Strike from problem-solving and “figuring it out”.
Yes, I realize that, in order to exist, we have to solve problems and figure shit out.
But believe me, neither your brain, nor your nervous system, nor your relationships, nor your business, nor your dreams benefit from being in default “problem-solving/figuring-it-out” mode 24/7.
Take a week, a day, or even an hour — and tell yourself, “For this time, I unplug from problem-solving. I am not a problem, and my life is not a problem. I am a miracle and my life is a poem.”
The internet is bombarding you with a seemingly infinite number of things that are promised to work.
Here’s how to keep your sanity intact, and make good decision.
The thing to remember is that, every business strategy
works for SOMEONE…
… for some TIME.
Put another way, any given strategy may not work for EVERYONE, because every brain and nervous system is different…
… and it may not work FOREVER, either because outside circumstances (like changes in algorithms/customer behavior trends/the popularity of platforms going up or down), or because it is unsustainable for YOU.
Consider that every single business strategy being sold to you… is being delivered to youVIA their business strategy.
Meaning, their #1 interest is getting YOU to buy their thing.
While they’re telling you “I’ll help you get popularity/sales,” what they’re really after is their own popularity and sales. (This is not to say they’re evil and their products suck and they don’t care about you! They may be great, have substance and genuinely care about you. But just remember, every business selling business solutions… is driven by their own interest.)
Here’s what will SAVE YOUR BUTT (and $$$), but is rarely said.
At the end of the day, whether your business succeeds or not comes down to two factors:
(1) the quality of your relationships
and
(2) whether what you’re doing feels nourishing + interesting, and therefore sustainable, for you.
(The quality and usefulness of your work is another giant factor, but let’s assume that is already in place.)
Let’s talk about each one.
(1) the quality of your relationships
This is the part that is tragically left out of so many conversations about marketing.
Getting more views, engagement, sales… is NOT the same thing as as cultivating HIGH QUALITY RELATIONSHIPS.
That is, when you have a true bond with people you give a damn about, who give a damn about you.
The work it takes to get ONE mega fan — the person who will drink up your every word like it’s an ice-cold glass of water in a desert, comes to IG to specifically check if you’ve posted anything new, tells all their friends about you, buys from you again and again, and will freak the fuck out if your account disappeared one day…
… is in an entirely different galaxy than the work it takes to get 10 sales from anyone who’s willing to pay, or get 1000 new followers.
And the former is INFINITELY more useful for your bottom line.
Most business advice is geared toward:
1. helping you get as many eyes and ears as possible from “just whoever.”
This is why those with 10’s of thousands of followers struggle to make a single sale.
2. helping you squeeze out as many sales as possible from “just whoever”
This is why so many people find that, the minute they pivot their offers or business identity, all their people drop off and they have to start from scratch
In considering business strategy, ask yourself:
does this feel like treating people with the utmost honesty, respect, and high regard for who they are as human beings
is this putting forward a version of me that the greatest number of people will find attractive OR a version of me that will call out powerfully to the RIGHT person, and repel everyone else?
Is this close to how I would treat people in my real life that I like, respect, and want to have long-lasting relationships with?
(2) whether what you’re doing feels nourishing + interesting, and therefore sustainable, for you.
Truth: business involves failing a LOT. Every single successful move is accompanied by 99 failures that came before.
Resilience is how you turn failure into learning, as opposed to “stuck in defeat and shame”.
And resilience is only possible when what you’re doing inherently feels nourishing and interesting to you.
When what you’re doing inherently feels nourishing and interesting to you, you are:
less attached to the outcome
more likely to bounce back from setbacks
more likely to enjoy the challenges
much more likely to keep going…
… which enables you to build a body of work that is worth gathering around.
Because so many people try to whiteknuckle it through activities that are DEPLETING and BORING to them, they quit fast, or just stay in the zone of flipflopping around with no growth.
You’ve heard the thing about workouts, right?
The only way to stick with it is if you find an activity that you actually ENJOY.
Exact same thing here.
A nuance here: this doesn’t mean there is zero discomfort. Let’s take the example of exercise.
If you’ve been a total couch potato and want to get moving, there is probably gonna be a phase where you’re trying different things and everything feels uncomfortable and awkward.
And even once you find something you like, there will be some pain as you learn how to get better at the thing.
And, even if you absolutely adore the thing, there will be “rainy days” when you just don’t feel like it.
So it’s not just eating strawberry shortcakes in a picnic every single day.
Nothing is that.
But identifying something that actually feels good, interesting and inherently rewarding for you to do, and focusing on that…
… is how you get resilient.
It is also how you build volume without quitting on yourself.
So, how do you find something that you actually LIKE to do?
Focus on what comes easily to you. Zoom in on your natural strengths and inclinations.
If you’re a social butterfly, go to real life events, meet people, and tell them what you do.
If you’re an inveterate writer (like me), write.
And ignore all the hype about reels or whatever. It takes discipline to be committed to what is inherently interesting and rewarding for you, and ignore the world’s noise. It’s worth it.
If you’re someone who loves structure and routine, don’t wing it. Plan everything.
If you’re a pisces queen with ADHD who thrives on just following your curiosity and intuition when you feel like it, DO THAT and fuck all the “you gotta plan” people. (Ahem, that is me).
If the idea of figuring out ads sounds deeply interesting to you, like inherently, do that.
If the same thing makes you vomity, ignore all the ad people and do your own thing. (I had made almost a $million before I ever ran my first ad. Ads aren’t magic. You are.)
I truly believe my podcast only became popular because I had zero attachment to how many people were listening. Making it was an inherently interesting challenge for myself.
Same thing with how I kept up my hypnosis, tarot-reading, and life coaching businesses for years and years when… it all barely added up to even a part time income.
Same thing with how I’m going now, as I emerge out of a months-long sabbatical and am deeply reconfiguring the foundations of my business, and there is zero guarantee that I’ll continue to be “successful” in the worldly sense.
Whatever isn’t inherently interesting and rewarding for you to do — that is to say, even if you got zero popularity or money from it, you would still do it for how fulfilled it makes you feel — YOU WILL QUIT ON.
If you don’t quit on it, you will burn out from it.
I promise you.
I speak standing before a ginormous graveyard of businesses that died because of this.
This is all a long winded way of just saying 3 things.
Focus on creating high quality relationships, not bigger numbers
treat people the way you’d treat folks in real life whom you like, respect, and hope to keep around for a long time
and
Do it in a way that works for you, and have the discipline to ignore everyone else.
If you really take this to heart, you will save yourself an enormous amount of heartache, energy drain, and money.
And put yourself on the track to the most sustainable business growth, and the highest flourishing of your creativity.
Why is Rashida hot in every still shot and I’m like THIS!??
Simone: We’ve been talking about allyship a lot, and a lot of people assume that, when I talk about allyship, it’s just about racism, or it’s about the LGBTQ+ community, or it’s about this one thing or another.
I even had people asking me, “Is this class only for white people?”
Rashida:: Because white people are the only people who are privileged, right? (/sarcasm)
Simone: Right! So let’s unpack that.
Rashida: Well, allyship is about finding solidarity with your fellow human, and it literally just doesn’t matter who they are or what group they belong to. Because as humans, we’re multifaceted. We’re not monolithic, and most of us have some sort of intersectionality.
What our brains like to do is to complicate simple things. And allyship is actually quite simple: treat people the way you want to be treated. That’s really it.
There’s not just one group of people who are experiencing oppression. There are places in your life where you are having an easier time than others, and so that is where you can show up.
Don’ try to start at your local NAACP or your local gay bar! It starts with your community. Where do you see the need? Are the children hungry? Are the unhoused being treated fairly?
Simone: You know, I’m not sorry to speak so much about racism and call out where white supremacy is doing harm. I’m not sorry to put a huge emphasis on that, because it’s important. However, I do think it’s unfortunate that allyship has gotten linked up with only that, because — yeah, obviously, systems of oppression exist. They affect us.
But it’s also like, if you’re walking down the street and you see someone fall down and hurt themselves, and you are like, “Are you okay? Can I help you up? Do you need me to get help?” That’s allyship.
Rashida: Yes!
Simone: And that has nothing to do with race. That person can be the same race as you, the same gender as you.
Rashida: Literally has nothing to do with anything other than you are on your feet and the person in front of you is not, and you’re going to help them get back on their feet.
Look. Nobody is going to leave this class with the cure to racism.
Simone: Aw, really? I was going to use that as a marketing point! LOL (/sarcasm)
Rashida: If wefind that cure, we are going to market the heck out of it. But right now, we don’t have it. We’re not going to find a cure to any sort of oppression that exists in the world.
What we will walk away with are tools that help us to be more self aware, so we know how to help our fellow human.
We’ve already established that people of color need help. LGBTQ+ community can use some assistance, especially from straight, cis people. But that isn’t the only place.
We’re talking about human-to-human interaction. And I think that makes it so much more simple and easy to digest. You don’t have to take on “the world”. You take on your world.
Simone: One of the things that you talk about in the free introductory class (which – have you downloaded it yet?), called Sustainable Allyship 101 is, you say, “I’m a black woman who is short, so I’m obviously not the paragon of unearned advantages in America. But also, I am cisgender, I am heterosexual, and I was raised Christian.”
We also talk about: do you speak English? Great. You speak the most dominant language in the world, and non-English speakers are at a huge disadvantage in the world because they don’t get to make their oppression be heard by people with the most power in the world.
Are you a US citizen? Are you a UK citizen? Are you a citizen in a country where the fact that you hold citizenship gives you a lot of advantages that aren’t afforded to other people who don’t? These are all places where we can share our resources.
Rashida: That’s it. That’s it. There’s no need to overcomplicate it, because when we feel like things are overwhelming, we tend to stay still.
Simone: Implicitly, that’s how I think a lot of people feel. If I’m a white person, I have to go and be the person who fixes racism for all of us. Or if I’m a man, I have to be the one who solves sexism. No! You are relieved of that responsibility!
Rashida: Yeah, let it go! You don’t have to hold on to that.
I think that recognizing your own world is so important because the world at large is overwhelming. Oh, Lord, is that going to happen in our country in a month or two? I was literally on the phone with a friend, and I was like, “You know what? I’m going back to my delusion. Everything’s fine. My world is right here, and I’m going to do what I can in my world.”
And those small things make a big difference. And it’s actually not small. It just seems small because it isn’t “the world”. But why in the world are we trying to take on “the world”? Why do we feel like we can do that?
Simone: I don’t know why. Yeah, I have to confess, I am affected by that. That bug bites me sometimes, where I’m like, “Oh, I feel like a horrible person because I haven’t solved genocide.”
Rashida: All by yourself, all in your brilliant mind, right?
Simone: I’m curious about your thoughts on this. What do you think about the encapsulation of allyship being: being the neighbor that you want to have?
Rashida: Absolutely. Be a good neighbor to your literal neighbor.
My neighbor raises chickens. She heard on the news that eggs were expensive, so whenever we want eggs, she is happy to give us eggs for free. When she’s out of town, we watch her house. When we’re out of town, she watches our house. That’s neighbor stuff. We’re making her life easier, and she’s making our life easier.
Simone: Where can I find a neighbor who has chickens?
And even if you don’t have chickens, what do you have a surplus of? Because you need your own to survive. Like your neighbor needs to have eggs for themselves, but when you have “extra” of something, you can share with others.
I have a surplus of material stuff. I live in an air conditioned and heated house and – you know – a fridge full of food at 24/7. And even on top of that, I have money in the bank! So where can I be of help with the extra that I have?
And it’s not just material, right? When your friend is feeling down, you might have a surplus of emotional resources, and you can be of support to them. That’s being a good neighbor.
And if you don’t have a surplus of stuff, then you take care of yourself.
Rashida: Absolutely. I know that I’ve heard people talk about allyship and say: “I don’t want an ally. I want someone who’s going to walk alongside me, knowing that we are not different.”
But the thing is, we are different, and so I think it’s really important to respect that, not only are we different in our group identifications, but we’re different as individuals.
Simone: I want to slow down here, because I don’t think people quite understand how important this is.
Let’s say a black person says, “I don’t want an ally who’s over there and thinking they’re helping me from over there. I want someone who’s going to fight the fight with me on the front line, next to me.” And that is entirely understandable.
But even if they’re linking arm-to-arm with you and walking next to you on the front line, their experience is different from your experience. And the consequences they face are going to be different from what you face.
Rashida: It’s important to respect those differences and to celebrate them, because that’s how we bring different strengths to the table. We are different, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together. It doesn’t mean that we can’t have the same goal. We’re just approaching it differently.
Simone: Each of us can bring our own differences to the table: our own gifts, our own talents, whatever our own “surplus” happens to be. Who lacks resources that I have? Who could benefit from my surplus? That is how we make our own corner of the world better — my community, my home.
And nobody is fixing racism!
Rashida: Right. God bless you. But maybe if we do a lot of small things together, one day, that’s what will happen. But right now, this moment, let’s just bring our expectations down a little bit.
Simone: So this class, our upcoming class is for you if you’re white, if you’re brown, if you’re black, if you’re purple. It is for everyone who wants to learn how to treat other people the way you would want to be treated.
Rashida: By the way, this is how you feel empowered in your own life, and not powerless. Because I know a lot of people are feeling powerless and angry, and ask: “what do I do with this rage?” This is going to help you with that.
Simone: I think that’s why, if you’re a person of color, or a member of a marginalized community, you especially shouldn’t miss this class.
Even if you experience a lot of marginalization, this class will help you to locate your power where you are powerful, and to be able to use that for good. And I promise you, we will help you find those. And you’re going to just feel better.
Rashida: I really want everyone to get that free ebook, because it’s going to set you up. It’s a workbook, so you get to work some stuff out. And it’s literally the training that I do for folks here in Indianapolis. I have been doing it since before the pandemic. It’s tried and true, and really wonderful. And it’s going to set you up very nicely for Thursday.
Simone: It is really the perfect preparation you can do for the deeper level of conversation we’re going to have on Thursday.
And if you don’t have the means to participate in the paid class, the free book is going to give you so much good stuff to work with.
And the recording of the paid class is going to be available for sale, even after the live class so there’s no rush if you’re feeling stretched, yeah.
Okay everyone. Rashida and I’ll be back. Thank you for joining us.
If you want to listen to the full, unedited version of our conversation, you can watch the Instagram Live that this transcript was taken from.
Rashida and I both just saw Wicked. No one wrote the film review that I was desperate to read, until Rashida spoke it out loud. Right here.
WARNING: This conversation contains massive spoilers. If you don’t want them, don’t read!
Rashida: I was really excited to go see it, because I had been avoiding Wicked for some years. When it came out, there was so much hype around it. Even after having been to Broadway in New York so many times, I just have never seen it. And so when the previews were coming out, my daughter was like, “I really want to go.” So I said I’d go with her.
I just walked in knowing that Dorothy isn’t the victim that you know, that the Wicked Witch of the West isn’t a bad person. And that’s really all I knew.
When I saw the beginning, they immediately started singing about how “Nobody mourns for the wicked.” But I already knew that she wasn’t wicked. So that felt gross, right?
I also knew from the previews that Glinda and Elphaba are friends. And when I saw Glinda, first of all, reveling in the hate for this woman that she considered a friend at one time – I’m probably going to get emotional – even if it was fake, a version of delight and joy that everyone was having for this woman’s life being gone… This is scene number one.
Then I watch this woman who was othered from birth, has no support except for this bear who loved her and took care of her, has no love, no support from her father. Her mother died when her baby, when her little sister was born, her little sister isn’t sure what to do with her. And people are allowed to abuse her, and when they do, she gets blamed.
I want to talk about how I connected to that as a black woman. There’s no way I could count from childhood to now, my 46th year on this planet, how many times I’ve been blamed for how I should have done something differently so people didn’t treat me in a way that made me feel small, so they could feel big, so they could get me back into the place that I was supposed my entire life.
So watching her go through that, I was instantly inside of her shoe. I understood it. I had supportive parents, but that doesn’t mean other adults in my life were supportive. And my parents couldn’t always be there. So, there were many times that I was blamed for my abuse.
That is why having the “good person” title is not what allyship is about. A lot of times when you are doing the work, people don’t think of you as an “ally”. They think of you as a disrupter, a person who is making them feel uncomfortable. They don’t like you. So if you are coming in here wanting to be liked, that’s not the work.
Even though this has been happening since birth, it’s still tender. I’m still a human who doesn’t want to be othered. And I don’t want to be blamed for my abuse. But that’s just the way the world is working now.
Elphaba was super defensive every time somebody met her. “Um, yes, I’m green. I know I didn’t grow up eating grass. No, I’m not sick. Yes. Is the way I’ve been since birth.” That’s her thing.
And people often look at that, especially if it’s their first time hearing it, and ask, “why are you so defensive?” Not “Wow, what happened to you that this is something that you automatically just tell people? Something must have happened to you for this to be your default.”
I can’t understand how you can’t find empathy for why she has to be so defensive. She shouldn’t have to rattle things off to people, because she’s always been faced with what feels to her like ridiculous questions.
She finally gets this friend, almost begrudgingly, not from a natural evolution. But they become very close, very quickly. And even when they get to Emerald City, you see Elphaba say they’re “very good friends.” But then Glinda looks at her and says, “best friends”.
And to accept that is vulnerability. “Okay, what you’re telling me right now is that you have my back and I have yours.” So, when they get in there and realize that everything is corrupt, and in order to gain power, the wizard says you have to find a common enemy — which here is the animals who weren’t even hurting anybody…
Simone: They were the scapegoat.
Rashida: Literally! The literal scapegoat!
How many scapegoats do we have? How many common enemies were created just this election cycle? Trans people make up 1% of the population, and people are so afraid about something they don’t know. Thinking that their children are going to go to school one gender and come back another gender. They don’t know how ridiculous that is. But because it’s only 1% of the population, most people don’t even know a trans person…
Simone: … and they intentionally inflamed that completely ridiculous fear again and again on purpose.
Rashida: For 1% of the population! And it kills me because of the suicide rate among that population. People are taking their own lives. For lies.
For Elphaba, there are no other people who are green. She is the only green person, so she has no other people to fight with. The goat who was the professor had a house full of other animals to fight with. She doesn’t have anybody. And at this time, she thinks she has Glinda.
Simone: You said earlier that they became friends under unnatural circumstance. The unnatural circumstance was that Glinda was trying to manipulate her way into getting Professor Morrible’s approval.
Rashida: Exactly. And we saw Glinda be very typical – and I’m just going to say the words – white girl privilege throughout the movie. When she says something offensive and somebody reacts, and then she’s like, “What? What did I even say?”
Simone: What hit me at the gut was how lavishly she gets praised and adored for, like, throwing a crumb at someone else because she calculated that it would benefit herself somehow. “Oh my god, you’re so generous. That’s so sweet of you. I can’t believe you’d be so selfless.” Her actions are over-praised and misdiagnosed as “good” and celebrated again and again and again.
Rashida: And when I saw her use her unearned advantage as a popular person to help Elphaba at the party, I was like…
Simone: Tell me what you think. I think that was the only pure moment of allyship in the entire movie. The rest of it was Glinda actively putting down Elphaba, or conspiring with forces that were trying to destroy her.
Rashida: Exactly. And meanwhile, just being like “We’re best friends!” That manipulation, coupled with active, ongoing betrayal throughout the entire thing – except for that one moment.
Simone: And before going to Emerald City, the whole song Popular – “I’m gonna make you popular.” All of that, to me, was so painful, because it felt like all of white people’s attempt to make us “better” and “save” us by making us be more like them, even though… “you know that you will never be us, and you will never be as powerful as us. But whatever you have going on over here is bad. So let’s try to change you a little…”
Rashida: “It makes you more like me.”
Simone: “You will never be me — don’t get me wrong — but you’ll be a little bit better than this.”
On the surface, it looked like a popular girl helping the unpopular girl. But no, this wasn’t about friendship to me. This was about a very cruel power dynamic in which the dominant way of being is acting as a violent force to erase and marginalize the the non-dominant way…
Rashida: Right, and even when their goat professor was forcibly taken out of the room and he’s yelling, “They’re not telling you the truth!”, Glinda’s reaction just made me so angry. “Well, what are we supposed to do?”
Simone: That is the very definition of non-allyship. That is actually the default. The default is resignation and denial and complicity, because you are prioritizing not making waves. You are chasing the illusion of safety above all else, above justice, above fairness, above humanity.
The heartbreaking thing that the movie pointed out is that the majority will always choose the illusion of safety. They will not choose allyship, even when they have literally seen with their eyes that the dominant power structure is a lie. And there’s no “there” there. It is a fabricated con.
Rashida: Because they’re like, “Well, this may be fake, but it is what’s powerful. So maybe I can find myself a place in this, too.” Because remember, Oz being powerful was just an illusion. Elphaba was the one with the power.
Simone: Exactly! The majority says, “I will choose the illusion of power over actual power again and again, because it makes me feel safe.” Oh, that is the quintessence of what it means to fail to be an ally.
Rashida: Yeah, one hundred percent. So when they’re in the tower, and Elphaba asks Glinda if she’s coming – and you know that she’s not – Glinda gets her a cape. Literally all of the things in the Wizard of Oz that made her scary – the pointy hat, the black cape – Glinda put them on her.
And then, she was alone again. She had to be strong by herself again, and she had to know that this person cared about her, but didn’t care enough to put herself in any minor amount of danger.
Simone: You know what screamed white supremacy about that whole sequence is that Glinda kept just saying, “We can talk this out. Let’s just go and talk to them. It’s all a big misunderstanding. If you’re just nice enough…” It is such a blatant and cruel betrayal of what Elphaba was there for.
Rashida: Right? Because you’re not going to talk to me and try to help me. You’re trying to talk to me to get me to submit. You don’t want me to be me.
When I saw Glinda make that decision, and Elphaba realized that she was on her own again – and now, it’s not just dealing with bullies, it’s the largest force in the world that has now called her an enemy, and has told the entire world that that they have to find her because she is wicked – she had to do all of that by herself.
This is a dramatic thing to say, but it just made me remember all of the people who didn’t choose me. All of the times that I said that I was so afraid for my life. Not even my life, my husband’s life. Every time he gets in a car, I’m afraid. Every time he walks outside of our door.
I’m afraid every time my child leaves this house because my baby has a mouth. And she’s not a black man, but she is a mouthy black woman, and the world don’t like that.
I have fear every single day that we leave this house that we’re not gonna make it back. And when I tell that to the people who are in my life who loved this musical on Broadway, who read the books, who were loved this movie so much, but then they chose their whiteness over me… I saw all the times that it has happened in that moment.
And I know that people in the theater were emotional. They were emotional because, “Oh, this is so sad. Oh, she’s defying gravity and oh, good for her.”
Fuck that.
She doesn’t want to have to defy gravity. She just wants to live. She has to fight because she’s been forced to.
That’s some bullshit that she has to do that.
“Oh, we’re so proud of you for being so brave.”
I just want to walk around without people harassing me. That would be cool. I would love to not be called wicked by the most powerful force in the world. I would love to have my power and not be seen as evil or as wrong. I would love to just sit in my power and help people, because that’s my nature.
But because I have this power and I am really good at helping people, people don’t know how to take it. So now I’m this thing that’s flying around in the sky, because that is the only place that I’m safe. And who does she have right now?
Simone: Every step of the way, you see the complicity. If there are 1000 characters in the movie, it’s 999 of them who continue to actively create that reality for Elphaba again and again. “I have the opportunity to just treat her the way that I would want to be treated. But I am not going to take it, because I like the illusion of safety.”
It wasn’t like the ending just happened to her. It was a slow and constant process of everyone around her actively failing her, not knowing and not caring. This is what has been happening and is still happening to black people, trans people…
Rashida: Think of the people who presented themselves as ally: the teacher and Glinda. This is why people don’t like the word “ally”. Because they show up with all the friendliness on their face. But when it comes down to it, they’re just using you.
And now here I am having to defy gravity, because y’all wouldn’t have my back.
Simone: And once you get burned enough times, you’re just gonna be like, “Fuck all of that.”
Rashida: Right? That is why I feel like our work is changing the tone of the word ally.
You can’t call yourself an ally and choose comfort. You can’t call yourself an ally and choose the illusion of safety. You can call yourself a “good person” all day long, but you don’t get to call yourself an ally.
An ally is a person who’s going to jump on that broom with her.
An ally is a person who’s going to take the palm of their hand and push the wizard down and get him the hell out of there.
Someone who’s going to get on that microphone and say, “Hey everybody? Guess what? We actually realized that Oz has absolutely no power, and we need to get him out of here.”
That’s what an ally does. And we’re not going to accept any other version of that, because if you say you are that, and you decide to choose the illusion of comfort, we’re calling you out.
Simone: Rashida, to me, this is what Wicked was about. And I think people are way too happy about this movie. And I’m like, you should have left the theater with a giant crisis.
Rashida: I was nauseous. I came home and had to take a shower. I was so sick and angry at all of the people who have just been like, “Oh, this movie’s so great. Oh, it’s so wonderful”.
I even posted on Facebook, “Did they change the plot? Is this the same movie that was the musical that y’all been dying over for 20 years? Because I cannot believe that a good portion of you are the exact same people who voted for…
Simone: Well, I could believe it. I think those are the same people who think this movie is about friendship! And music! Cute songs and lighting and costumes! I think if you weren’t profoundly uncomfortable after watching the movie, then you completely missed the point.
Rashida: In situations like this, I work very hard to find the empathy, to find the place where they’re coming from. And I’m going to tell you, the feelings are still super fresh, so I’m struggling with that right now. I’m still just mad right now.
Simone: I was actually searching online to see who is saying this. And I didn’t find much. There are people going, “oh yeah, it’s talking about fascism” but no one I saw was having this conversation that Rashida and I were about to have on text.
There’s going to be someone out there who listens to you talk about it and will feel healed by it. So thank you for saying yes to this conversation. Thank you for sharing even while it’s fresh for you.
If you want to listen to the full, unedited version of our conversation, you can watch the Instagram live that this transcript was taken from.
I was able to see myself clearly, maybe for the first time, during my sabbatical.
It wasn’t pretty.
—
I think it was all the time and space I had to think.
And the comparative level of maturity that I’d developed over time to be able to hold myself with unconditional self-love and self-respect.
It is only with unconditional self-love and self-respect that one could see oneself clearly enough.
That is the only way you can be safe without the armor of stories and identities one has built around oneself out of defensiveness and fear.
Otherwise the terrain is too fraught, too risky.
One could get eaten by the sharks of shame.
One could get buried under an avalanche of self-loathing.
—
In sabbatical, I spent a lot of time with the teachings of Zen masters.
Ones that had guns pointed at them. That had willingly spent time in prisons. That had taken vows of poverty. That had risked their lives for the oppressed. That had recited the sutras and spent thousands of hours in meditation and then actually flexed the power of their titanium-grade spiritual backbone in real life.
If only people knew what “mindfulness” is really capable of in Mahayana Buddhism.
It was actually breathtaking, thinking about how green and shallow I have been in comparison.
(What’s more breathtaking was how unaware I had been of that fact.)
What an impudent little poseur I had been, thinking that I was some kind of hot shit, doing something profound, changing the world!
I also saw the limitations of my personal character with brutal clarity.
My irascibility. My imperiousness. The sloppy command over the formidable instrument of my own mind that led to so much ‘leak’.
This was all felt, once again, with zero unkindness toward myself.
Rather, I felt like a child who scaled the neighborhood hill, proudly planted the flag I’d painted at home, then looked up to discover Everest.
The ferocity of my feeling was not hatred against the version of myself who climbed the little hill, but a fire that was a love of climbing.
I saw higher.
Infinitely higher.
I was humbled.
It felt terrible.
And deeply, deeply cleansing.
—
I had read the excerpt of Alexei Navalny’s memoir, which sent me down a rabbit hole of reading the epistles of Occupied Korea’s own freedom fighters on death row.
My husband argued with me. “I don’t believe for a second he actually wrote that stuff from prison in the Arctic. How’d he get it out?”
But it actually didn’t matter to me whether he really did write those words in prison.
There were plenty of others before him, and there will be others after him. In Russia. Turkey. Iran. Both Koreas. Palestine.
What mattered to me was the example of fierce moral clarity and courage that slice through the haze of willful oblivion, selfishness and greed that cloud our collective vision. The dry Russian wit — in the midst of it all!! — was just a heartrending cherry on top. (He cracks jokes with his prison guards!)
What a man.
—
Navalny died for a free Russia.
“What are you willing to die for?”
That is a horrible, distasteful, inhumane question.
Because who wants to die?
I do not romanticize situations where that question becomes necessary.
In any universe, I am sure Mr. Navalny would have preferred to be alive, at home, reading his books, bickering with his wife and playing with his grandchildren. It is peace that ought to be prized and romanticized, not authoritarianism, not strife, not war.
And for most of us who are lucky enough to only have to ever face much, much smaller stakes, this question becomes useful insofar as it leading us to the opposite question.
In a world where too many people are forced to risk bodily harm and death to fight for their own dignity, those of us who have the luxury of not having to do that can ask ourselves: “what we are willing to live for?”
Whatever the answer, we can do the living with our full throats and bellies.
If all there is to fear is life — ah, life! — it really cannot be that bad.
We can slash fear and dance on.
Bravely.
—
I have not accomplished much of anything in life. (I recently had this thought while examining the resume of J.D. Vance. That man has done nothing of consequence in his life except write what used to be evaluated as a decent book. Then I realized — well, hah, neither have I, I guess. At least one of us isn’t a heartbeat away from the Presidency.)
I’m not qualified to do much of anything.
I’d be pretty useless in a nuclear apocalypse. I do not know how to hunt, or grow food, or treat the sick, or build shelter.
I don’t know much of anything. (That is truly not false modesty, and you will find out how that’s true if you ever had me on your team while playing Trivial Pursuit).
My qualification for getting up and keeping going is that I am alive, I have a heartbeat, and there is something moving inside me that wants to be expressed.
The difference between when I was younger and now is that, today, I truly believe that that is good enough.
a redwood forest, possibly the very embodiment of the opposite of “noise”
I just did an extensive Q&A series on Instagram stories.
On all the topics.
(It is saved as a “stories highlight” on my profile if you want to look. It will be on there for a while, though it might be gone if you’re reading this post far enough in the future.)
Responding to something I said there, a friend asked, “how do I know if my program isn’t just adding to the noise, putting more of ‘what everyone else is doing’ out there?”
I was, and am, so grateful for this question.
It is a courageous question, coming from someone whose spirit is healthy enough to be willing to risk discomfort.
That’s more than I could ask for from… so many.
I thought deeply about how to answer this, and want to talk about it here.
But first, non-duality.
Nothing is inherently noise, or non-noise.
The music you love so much might just be noise to someone else.
The literature you find so meaningful might just be unremarkable strings of words to someone else.
The teaching that saved your life might just sound like fluffy nonsense to someone else.
Noise isn’t an inherent property of anything, but a perception, a judgment.
That said, judgments are sometimes useful.
Judgment is discernment.
And sometimes, the lack of discernment hurts us.
Here’s what I’m willing to define as noise, right now: that which lacks substance and root.
When something is lacking in substance and root and still manages to persist in the world, it is usually because it makes up for what it lacks in other attributes.
Like: the soft manipulation of shiny packaging and sleek slogans, and the ability to appeal to the lowest common denominator through the triggering of our basest instincts.
Add on top of that the irresistible pull of the “cheap, fast, easy, and convenient”, then we have a recipe for something full of static… but no signal.
One of the reasons I’m pulling my old, enormously popular podcast off the air is my profound regret that, in hundreds of episodes teaching people how to get the word out about their thing, I’ve rarely stopped to ask them: “is your thing worth getting the word out about?”
If I were to do a do-over — which I am, now — here’s what I would ask again, and again.
Does your thing have substance?
Meaning, did you come by what you claim honestly?
Is it embodied and battle-tested?
When you take away the packaging, the buzzwords, the constructs and methodologies skimmed off 2-month-long course without the much slower, non-linear, winding and vexatious work of personal cultivation, is there a there there?
And can you answer this infuriating — and yet, ultimately the most important — question of:
“Why does your thing matter in a world where wars and genocides are still raging, a quarter of the global population is living under the poverty line, and where we are all equally facing a mass extinction event, probably less than a century away?”
Does your thing have roots?
Meaning, how deep does it go?
Are the roots deep enough to sustain you through floods, draughts and storms?
What kind of worldsense is it grounded in — if not the default of appropriative, disembodied, post-colonial capitalist emptiness?
Can it stand the test of time?
Where can you track the lineage of your thing?
Is that something you can make moral sense of — if not be proud of?
These are thorny, inconvenient, terribly difficult questions.
If you have an easy and quick time answering them, you’re probably already on the wrong track.
And it’s worth repeating: my biggest regret is that I haven’t posed these questions to the world sooner, more frequently and insistently.
It’s not that I believe everyone should sit on their hands and wait to take action on their passions until they have all the answers perfectly figured out.
I actually think that’s impossible.
But I think the questions beg to be honestly, humbly and vigorously wrestled with.
I think doing so is the work.
It is how you become a person of substance, and how you grow roots.
I don’t think anyone who is unwilling to do so can claim to be a serious person in the public arena.
I think anyone who is unwilling to do so is most likely, by default, just contributing noise.
