Welcome to
Empowered Thinking
for Deep Change
INTRODUCTION
In my Empowered Thinking posts, I explore 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 the consumer culture that surrounds us).
I don't have solutions to the dilemmas we humans face, but I do have hope. I don't have answers, but I do have questions -- and 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 sometimes must precede hope and possibility...
... and also to share stories, perspectives, questions, insights, and resources that I find helpful and hopeful.
May these offerings bring help and hope to you, too.
FEATURED Posts
We’re so in the habit of controlling each other/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 re-examine these habits and assumptions.
The “bus” I’m talking about is entire populations of people all gabbling without listening to one another and without thinking clearly. The bus is hurtling toward a cliff, with no-one in the driver’s seat. The opinions, the conflict, the angst, are all fueling the bus. Here’s how to understand what’s going on, and how to disengage from the insanity.
Sometimes change asks more of us than we have to give, and we break. Sometimes we recover, but whether we recover or not, there is no going back to what we were before the change. We’re transformed us, forever, into something different than we were before. Here’s why I feel that this degree of change is upon us collectively now, and why I feel hopeful even in the midst of all that’s happening around the world.
Our “story,” of how the world works and who we are, is like a script that prompts our choices and actions. There is a new story available to us that prompts cooperative and life affirming behaviors rather than competitive and exploitative ones. Indigenous peoples and eastern spirituality have been indicating it, and the newest sciences are finally now “discovering” it. It’s a story that would put us on an entirely different trajectory.
Post Collection: 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.
Post Collection: 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.
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.
Post Collection: EMPOWERED THINKING
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.
You can read the posts in this Series one at a time by scrolling down, or...
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.
You can read the posts in this Series one by one, or download the entire Series as a free PDF.
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...
You can read the posts in this Series one at a time by scrolling down, or...
(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.
(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.
You can read the posts in this Series one by one, or download the entire Series as a free PDF.