In the blizzard of the world, what work truly matters?
“The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul.”
For change-makers, it’s getting harder to discern what meaningful change looks and feels like.
We have entered a new unprecedented phase of history where our human foot-print on Earth has unbalanced the planet’s life-sustaining systems, threatening life as we know it. Despite all the dedicated efforts of change-makers around the world, collectively we have not done enough, nor acted fast enough.
What is the work that will truly matter in these times?
This question has been troubling me for a while but a well-overdue update of my brand and website turned a nagging feeling into a raging blizzard. I used to be a brand strategist. This should have been easy. Right? Nope. I was doubting and questioning EVERYTHING. The inner-critic went wild:
“How is that going to make a difference? What’s the point? This is not enough. That’s what worked before, but is it what’s needed now? How can one person make a difference given the scale of the issues? Is this hubris, an ego project? People don’t want to hear a negative story. These words sound trite. Blah Blah Blah. I’m not brave enough…Maybe I should just give up and do something else?”
It was unsettling, exhausting, and felt unproductive. However, I knew that the not knowing, the questioning, was important so I stuck with it- for nine long months. Here’s some of what I learnt along the way.
For me, getting to the heart of what truly matters is an ongoing, deeply personal and interconnected process of:
Daring to get real about the reality of the world around us
Finding the wisdom in not knowing
Trusting different ways of knowing
Being guided by clear intentions
Daring to get real
I’d describe myself as an optimist by nature. My everything-is-possible mindset has served me pretty well in life so far. Now, this optimism feels misplaced in the face of the climate emergency and growing social and economic injustice. However, the alternative of succumbing to despair doesn’t feel like a very attractive nor constructive option either.
Unexpectedly, I found some inspiration in a book called “At work in the ruins” by Dougald Hine. The title suggested a kind of pragmatic realism that intrigued me. “Don’t you find it depressing?” people ask me? Truth be told, I found relief in Hine’s clearly laid out analysis of a modern way of living that doesn’t make sense anymore, that hasn’t made sense for a while. I already felt the disconnect studying Economics and Politics at university in the late 90’s, and it persisted over the next decades of my career as a change-maker working in large global institutions. The change just hasn’t been fast enough, nor deep enough.
Seeing through the shattered dream of modernity
Now, finally, I was joining up all the dots, and seeing through the false promises of this modern society, based in the belief that ‘progress’ for all will be achieved though continuous growth. Did I dare to fully step into this way of seeing the world? It felt risky. Would I be dismissed for dooms-day mongering? Would mainstream players see me as going too far, less tempered radical, more unreasonable activist? Would others accuse me of ‘giving up too soon’? I realised that these fears were rooted in a deeper challenge to my own sense of identity, of who I think I am, how I live my life and how I show up in the world. I needed to dare to get real. To get to work in the shattered pieces of our modern world. I just didn’t know what that looked like anymore.
Finding wisdom in not knowing
For all the knowledge I could gather around well-being economics, meaningful work, regenerative living, hospicing modernity or building a post-growth society, there was no blue-print to follow. No “10 steps towards meaningful work”. There’s no guarantee of having the ‘right’ impact. I felt caught in a paradoxical world. Whilst I could see the predicament we’re in sharply, finding the work that truly matters (let alone what my website should say) felt increasingly unknowable.
Not knowing is probably the sanest response we can have in this predicament.
To begin to know, is in fact to let go of the very idea that there could be a right answer. To believe that we can know what work would ultimately truly matter in the end , is a kind of delusion. It’s not the end of the world, but the end if the world as we know it, Hind tells us. ‘There’s a kind of hubris in thinking that we can know how the story ends.’
Understanding this at a cognitive level is one thing. Really surrendering to the full meaning of these words is another. What does doing look and feel like when it comes from a place of not knowing the outcome? How does one bake uncertainty into products and services, when clients want clear outcomes?
Navigating this uncertainty is like the experience of arriving in a foreign land where the language and culture are unfamiliar. We have lost our bearings and we can no longer trust our familiar and socially accepted ways of behaving and speaking.
A space between two worlds.
We are in a space between two worlds, where we can see that the old world and ways no longer make sense, but the new is not shaped yet. In this kind of ‘liminal space’, I have noticed myself feeling torn between holding on to old patterns of thought and behaviour and finding the courage to try the new. All we can do, I tell myself, is to move forward and see what response we get.
Trusting different ways of knowing
When we are facing a predicament, as opposed to a problem that can be fixed, our cognitive knowing, no matter how well developed, will not be enough. I recently read: If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom. What then is wisdom? Over these last 9 months, it has felt like practicing a kind of courageous discernment.
This kind of discernment takes courage because it calls for more emotional, embodied, intuitive and spiritual ways of knowing. These ways of knowing that are often unfamiliar, underdeveloped, underestimated and even frowned upon in our scientific secular world as being unreliable, unfounded or plain woo-woo.
Yet, these ways of knowing are also rooted deep in our history, in our collective human (and beyond-human) experience. Whilst they may have become less ‘socially acceptable’ in the modern scientific era, they are still present. We can hear them in our everyday language: ‘I need to get out of my head’, ‘listen to your gut-feel’, ‘what is your heart telling you?’.
There’s many ‘schools’, approaches and courses out there to help us develop different ways of knowing. Yet learning to use these in our day to day, to make them part of our ‘being’ is a process of unlearning our existing habits and experimenting with what works for us. For example, outside of workshops or guided sessions, I struggle to sit and meditate for more than a minute or two as part of my daily routine. However walking, moving, working with my hands enables me to access more instinctive knowing and insight. Free writing, and journaling also works for me, and I am always surprised by how many insights occur in the shower!
When inner-knowing reveals itself, there’s no big song and dance.
Like when nature reveals it’s beauty, there’s no fanfare to get our attention, it’s up to us to pause long enough to notice.
There’s no song and dance.
The trick, or the courageous discernment, is to pay attention, to actually listen to those insights and act on them, rather than letting them get lost amongst the constant stream of thoughts. So now I build walks, creative breaks and time in nature into my working day. Old habits die hard, as I still sometimes feel guilty that I am skiving off work (yet I’m my own boss!). So now, when I get busy or driven by my to-do list, that’s the signal that it’s time to stop and go for a walk, or jump in the shower!
Being guided by clear intentions
When navigating uncertainty, I also found that it helps to get clear on my intentions. This is different to purpose which is often defined as a single idea, something we want to become or do in the future. On my Meaning Makers coaching program, using the Map of Meaning® framework, I work with clients to identify their guiding intentions. A guiding intention needs to be specific enough to be able to inform our choices and decisions, and broad enough to leave room for us to adapt to what emerges in life.
For example, I have 14 intentions that guide me in life and work. One of these is ‘teaching future generations’. Unlike say ‘become a lecturer at university’ which would prescribe the solution as a fixed goal, ‘teaching future generations’ can take many forms. This intention helps me stay open to what opportunities come my way, rather than being fixated on a specific outcome. Working with clear intentions has enabled me to stop doing work or activities that are not aligned with who I want to be. There’s a gradual shift away from doing things because they present themselves to us as a kind of legacy from what we always did before, towards doing things because we initiated them from deep within.
What truly matters now?
These nine long months, taught me that sometimes, to discern what truly matters you have to stop long enough to discern what truly matters. For now, I will continue my work as a change-maker and also support other change-makers through coaching, team experiences and events.
Together, reshaping the way we think, live and work, for the wellbeing of people and planet.
“When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world- in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace, and in political life- as we are called back to our ‘hidden wholeness’ amidst the violence of the storm” (Parker Palmer)