If you want to thrive in social justice work, find ways to connect what you do with what gives you energy. Having that nourishment will make it easier for you to sustain your efforts when things inevitably get difficult.
Change work can be a challenge, so after 30 minutes of email, I stop and move my body. This energizes my thinking, and I’m able to fly through email more efficiently than before I took the quick break. What do you love to do that gives you energy?
When you have an energizing practice, use it! But when you start using it, don’t be surprised if you forget it and fall back into old patterns. Adding a new practice to your workflow will create friction because you are changing a well ingrained pattern of behavior.
After I started integrating movement breaks into my workflow, I still would push myself to sit down at my computer for hours to finish writing deadlines. Soon I would stop the movement breaks and any other breaks, believing that sitting until at the computer until 4am was the discipline I needed.
Gluing myself to the computer was an old method that left me so exhausted that I couldn’t appreciate the fruits of my labor. But I was used to it. So now when the old behavior kicks in, I take a breath, offer myself some compassion, and look away from the computer.
To integrate a new behavior takes practice, which includes some failure. Both failure and success are central to developing a practice, because perfection is a myth. Embracing the failures will actually help you celebrate the successes because you’re respecting yourself throughout your process.
What’s a practice that you are trying to integrate into your life? How are you treating yourself when you fail or feel like you haven’t done your best? How can you respect yourself when things haven’t gone how you hoped they would go?
Radical acceptance is the way to get back into your practice. Every superhero fails, but accepting failure without submitting to despair helps you get back up and make the changes you are striving to reach.
What’s one way you can offer yourself some compassion as you get back up after your next failure?