Thinking for Ourselves
in ways that build inner resilience
The world we have created is a product of our thinking. If we want to change the world, we have to change our thinking.
~ Albert Einstein
INTRODUCTION
In these posts, I explore our assumptions about our selves and our purpose in the world, ideas for reclaiming our sovereignty as individuals, and how we can build our capacity to care more effectively for whatever needs our care (which starts with our inner selves).
I get into how our ways of thinking, being, and relating shape our lives and our world.
I also get into how we can develop our ability to live a self-directed life (as opposed to a life directed by things outside our selves, including but not limited to the consumer culture that surrounds us).
You may particularly enjoy these posts if you are someone who sometimes finds yourself coping with feelings like depression, overwhelm, impotence, grief, rage, or guilt.
Why? Because feelings like these are a healthy response to the overwhelming nature of the ecological and social crises we are collectively facing. They're also a healthy response to the individual circumstances many of us have grown up in, or find ourselves in now. If this is how you sometimes feel, know that it's not because there's anything wrong with you.
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
I don't have solutions to the dilemmas we face, but I do have hope. I don't have answers, but I do have questions -- and I passionately believe that the questions we ask shape the answers we receive.
There are no quick fixes here. Instead, my aim is to acknowledge the frustration, grief, and despair that are on the other side of the coins of hope and possibility...
... and also to share stories, perspectives, prompts, insights, and resources that I find helpful and hopeful.
RECENT and FEATURED Posts
Locating power outside of myself leads to me trying to create safety for myself by controlling the people and events around me. Conversely, locating power within myself liberates me to change my internal experience regardless of my outer relationships or circumstances — and that makes a difference to how satisfied and effective I can be both personally and in my efforts to make a difference in the world around me.
BUILDING PERSONAL SOVEREIGNTY
Parenting yourself to keep "growing up" is not easy; in fact it's the hardest work you'll ever do. It's also far and away the most important and useful work you'll ever do, both for your own personal benefit and for everything you care about in the World.
This category of posts explores ways to keep growing emotionally and spiritually, to become more aware, empowered, present, and engaged. As you do, you'll become better able to hold space for reconciliation, healing, repair, and possibility - within yourself and also in the world around you.
You can't wait till you're perfect before you show up and take action, but you can be gentle with yourself, commit to your own growth and learning, be mindful of what influences your thinking, and consciously choose how you will respond to the world around you.
Locating power outside of myself leads to me trying to create safety for myself by controlling the people and events around me. Conversely, locating power within myself liberates me to change my internal experience regardless of my outer relationships or circumstances — and that makes a difference to how satisfied and effective I can be both personally and in my efforts to make a difference in the world around me.
We’re so in the habit of controlling each other or being controlled that we’ve forgotten how to think for ourselves. We’re so overwhelmed by the challenges we face that we assume there’s nothing we can do (and it’s all our fault). And we assume that controlling each other is necessary and failing was inevitable because humans are just basically bad.
Let’s explore how we might replace these habits and assumptions with more empowered ways of thinking.
(10th in a Series) When you do the deep personal work necessary to give up conflict (internal and external), this invisible choice wields power out of all proportion to its humble appearance.
(9th in a Series) As within, so without. How we care for our innermost selves, each other, and our planet, are all linked. As urgent as it may seem to address those issues “out there,” it’s essential to begin “in here.”
(8th in a Series) In our make-it-happen culture, making a difference to anything means grunting and sweating, burning the candle at both ends, making herculean efforts. It’s an that approach keeps us in battle mode and sustains drama and conflict.
(7th in a Series) There are ways to set up your distractions on purpose so that they still lead you in the right direction.
(6th in a Series) The idea that you need motivation and will power to reach your goals is part of a story that says if we use enough of the right kind of force, we’ll get to the goal. There is an easier way.
(5th in a Series) By prioritizing what is important over what is urgent, you can live a more spacious, meaningful, satisfying life.
(4th in a Series) How your taking care of your “response-ability”—your ability to choose your own responses—increases your personal power and expands your influence.
(3rd in a Series) How to focus your energy where you can be most effective, rather than wasting it on things that you cannot make any difference to.
(2nd in a Series) Here is a way of looking at even the really big challenges that breaks them down to a manageable size.
If you choose to keep growing as an adult, you’ll become increasingly self-actualized and self-reliant, and less dependent on corporate providers. This is very BAD NEWS for the growth economy, which is why no profit-focused corporation will ever fund government policies to encourage the public to behave like this.
RECONNECTING
This collection of posts explores how we can reconnect with each other, with ourselves, and with nature, including our own inner guidance and the natural cycles of life.
"It was in [a setting of belonging and connection] that we emerged as a species. Our profound feelings of lacking something are not a reflection of personal failure, but the reflection of a society that has failed to offer us what we were designed to expect." ~ Francis Weller
"The idea that we live in something called 'the environment' is utterly preposterous... The world that environs us, that is around us, is also within us. We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it; it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh." ~ Wendell Berry
Spring is the time to look at the “seeds” or intentions we’ve been gestating over winter, to choose those with the best chances of surviving and thriving, and to let go of the rest of them. As in the garden, so in our inner lives. Otherwise, your coming “growing season” may be filled with too much stuff, or with stuff that isn’t serving you. And if it isn’t serving you then it also won’t be serving your world, which is an extension of you.
What gardeners do is somewhere on a continuum from controlling the life (and death) cycles in the garden, to managing them, to interacting intelligently with them. We tend to default to control because of our culturally ingrained assumption that without control there will be chaos and anarchy.
This has implications far beyond the garden. How do our assumptions about the need for control shape our world?
The moon influences the ocean and its tides, the flow of sap and the life force in our gardens, and the behavior of many different birds, animals, and crustaceans. If we choose to pay attention, it can also indicate ways that we humans can align ourselves with the rhythms and cycles of life in our efforts to bring ourselves back into harmony with nature.
Logical, rational thinking understandably sees things as separate. ‘I am me; everything else is something “other” than me.’ There is another way to see things. Through a lens of interbeing, I am still me, but now I recognize that I’m closely related to everything that the mindset of separation calls “other.”
EMPOWERED THINKING
Spring is the time to look at the “seeds” or intentions we’ve been gestating over winter, to choose those with the best chances of surviving and thriving, and to let go of the rest of them. As in the garden, so in our inner lives. Otherwise, your coming “growing season” may be filled with too much stuff, or with stuff that isn’t serving you. And if it isn’t serving you then it also won’t be serving your world, which is an extension of you.
What gardeners do is somewhere on a continuum from controlling the life (and death) cycles in the garden, to managing them, to interacting intelligently with them. We tend to default to control because of our culturally ingrained assumption that without control there will be chaos and anarchy.
This has implications far beyond the garden. How do our assumptions about the need for control shape our world?
The moon influences the ocean and its tides, the flow of sap and the life force in our gardens, and the behavior of many different birds, animals, and crustaceans. If we choose to pay attention, it can also indicate ways that we humans can align ourselves with the rhythms and cycles of life in our efforts to bring ourselves back into harmony with nature.
The logical mind wants to muscle its way to the results we want; when muscle is inadequate to the task, we think we’ve failed and we’re out of options.
The heart, on the other hand, is not afraid to invoke the results we want by the quality of our attention and the power of our desire to give what we don’t physically have to give.
Logical, rational thinking understandably sees things as separate. ‘I am me; everything else is something “other” than me.’ There is another way to see things. Through a lens of interbeing, I am still me, but now I recognize that I’m closely related to everything that the mindset of separation calls “other.”
Why We Doubt Our Intrinsic Worth This is a super-short post; just a few seconds to readOur culture measures the worth of children in “good behavior” that reflects well on parents, caregivers, and teachers. We measure the worth of adults in terms of visible wealth, status, followers, beauty (defined by very narrow criteria), youth, and power. No
“Independent” individuals and nuclear families are artificially sustained by a fossil fuel dependent, growth-at-all-costs system that cannot last. The only viable alternative is to return to living in direct relationship with each other and with the web of life that can sustain us indefinitely, if we care for it as the extension of ourselves that it really is.
Series of 4 Posts: OUT-GROWING CONSUMERISM
The consumer culture has a straight and narrow path with "parental figures" to keep us on it: globalized corporations (manipulating us into states of endless desire for "more"), and well-meaning government institutions (holding our hands and relieving us of all personal responsibility).
This path leads us into a form of juvenile dependency that may last our whole lives.
On this dependency treadmill, consumers spend their life pursuing the dopamine hits that come with each new thing, each bigger, shinier, faster widget that will surely, at last, bring peace of mind and happiness.
Who in their right mind would live a life like this on purpose?
There is another path.
It leads to increasing self-actualization and self-determination, and decreasing reliance on experts, institutions, and the short-term quick fixes that drive the consumer economy.
If you choose to keep growing as an adult, you’ll become increasingly self-actualized and self-reliant, and less dependent on corporate providers. This is very BAD NEWS for the growth economy, which is why no profit-focused corporation will ever fund government policies to encourage the public to behave like this.
Series of 10 Posts: WHEN NOTHING YOU CAN DO MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Have you ever felt that you're existing in an uneasy state that switches back and forth between mild concern, alarm, and/or a feeling of numbness or avoidance? “I’ll do what I can, and when I don't know what to do I’ll try not to think about it.”
- What can we do to make a difference—in our own personal lives and for the many issues we care about?
- Where should we focus our efforts, assuming we have any spare time and energy to focus with?
- What can we do to help ourselves if we have no spare time and energy?
- Is it selfish or wrong to want to live a meaningful, satisfying life personally, when so much is going on in the world around us?
- Is it enough to be working to raise a family, to get off the consumption treadmill, and to make some small difference in our own little sphere of influence, enough?
This 10-part Series of articles came out of my search for answers to questions like these, and for the strategies I needed to make my answers stick. Here's what I found:
- hope and perspective,
- distinctions and strategies for making more of a difference in your own personal life,
- and why I think that taking care of your own “small” stuff, is a viable way of also doing your part to take care of our Earth.
I haven't found all the answers — far from it. And the strategies I've found don't always work (actually they do, but I forget to use them). I'm definitely the one who most needs to apply the lessons I write about in this Series.
But this stuff does work better than what I was doing before. With each rinse and repeat it gets easier, the possibilities expand, and each time I'm ready to stumble forward the next step reveals itself.
I hope that reading this Series will be as helpful for you as writing it has been for me...
(1st in a Series) Everything we need to create a more just, alive, abundant and beautiful world exists today. Why aren’t we using it?
(2nd in a Series) Here is a way of looking at even the really big challenges that breaks them down to a manageable size.
(3rd in a Series) How to focus your energy where you can be most effective, rather than wasting it on things that you cannot make any difference to.
(4th in a Series) How your taking care of your “response-ability”—your ability to choose your own responses—increases your personal power and expands your influence.
(5th in a Series) By prioritizing what is important over what is urgent, you can live a more spacious, meaningful, satisfying life.
(6th in a Series) The idea that you need motivation and will power to reach your goals is part of a story that says if we use enough of the right kind of force, we’ll get to the goal. There is an easier way.
(7th in a Series) There are ways to set up your distractions on purpose so that they still lead you in the right direction.
(8th in a Series) In our make-it-happen culture, making a difference to anything means grunting and sweating, burning the candle at both ends, making herculean efforts. It’s an that approach keeps us in battle mode and sustains drama and conflict.
(9th in a Series) As within, so without. How we care for our innermost selves, each other, and our planet, are all linked. As urgent as it may seem to address those issues “out there,” it’s essential to begin “in here.”
(10th in a Series) When you do the deep personal work necessary to give up conflict (internal and external), this invisible choice wields power out of all proportion to its humble appearance.