Tag: #Control

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Under the Microscope

Systemic change is not meant to be examined under a microscope. It is intended to be viewed through the zoom-out lens.

Don’t examine the ant that is part of the anthill. Be the hawk flying above that is spending years surveying the changing landscape.

If you want to see if the needle has moved, the smallest time period I would recommend would be a 10-year comparison period.

And really the best view would be 40-50 years.

What has changed in the last 40 years?

Are we getting somewhere?

What issues have changed? Which ones are persistent and have remained?

If you are going to judge your systemic advocacy progress on the last 6 months of your work, you will absolutely frustrate yourself. You will feel like you have gotten nowhere. Which will not necessarily be true.

Systemic work is about seed planting. Things grow over time.

Creating a new normal that society just accepts. Raising the bar. Changing expectations.

Micro level advocacy progress: you can see the steps. You can see the incline or decline.

Macro level advocacy progress: the steps are invisible. They are forever moving and floating around, changing levels and going up and down. Constantly taking steps forward, one step back.

Save yourself the mental anguish. You are torturing yourself with your own mental framework. This is where we can become our own mountain. We all have our moments of frustration and wanting to scream from a mountain top. After we wake up everyone on the mountain top, we need to walk down off the mountain.

I highly suggest you save yourself and don’t apply the micro-level view to a macro-level problem. You will get bitter, burn out and weed yourself out unnecessarily.

Keep yourself in the game and change your lens. Examining ants = burnout = risk of health problems.

Understand systemic change = be the hawk.

All the little things add up over time.

Systemic advocacy involves multiple approaches from multiple groups. Which is why we need everyone. We need the legal route; we the community building route. We need the loud advocates, and we need the behind the scenes quiet advocates. We launch litigation and build case law, and different groups collaborate and pull people closer to us. We build. Slowly. One shovel at a time. Taking legal advancements and APPLYING it. Because laws are nothing unless they are used by the people who need them, especially when the system would prefer for them not to exist.

Systemic change takes teams, sustained over long periods of time.

It is hopeful to see so many people eager to engage with the process.

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Sometimes You Just Need to Laugh

Systems can be so ridiculous, so ludicrous, so illogical, so over the top that you just need to laugh, or you’ll go hysterical.

I come out of meetings with Ottawa and wonder what planet am I on. They must come from planet Make-No-Sense.

The circles that systems send you through and then defend them like it is purely logical is a friggen joke.

They can be so over the top; what on Earth is there to do? Where do you even start with this ridiculousness?

It all seems so HUGE.

Try to explain this to someone else, and you just have to laugh. It turns into a comedy show. I envision this all as a cartoon. A Broadway musical. All explained in song.

The sad part is, is that these systems cause a lot of harm.

And there is no quick fix.

No simple solution.

So, in those moments when you finish the most ridiculous meetings, you just don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Choose to laugh.

You have to look at the ridiculousness and make jokes around the office. Find the comics that resemble the meetings. And think of the songs that would be perfect to explain all of this in the Broadway musical of all this.

Save yourself to keep yourself in the game.

You can choose to keep yourself afloat, and a great way to do that, I have found, is through comedy.

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Move from “let it go” to “park it for now”

If you are doing systemic advocacy here are some truths you will need to absorb.

  1. This is not going to be solved today or tomorrow, or possibly anytime soon.
  2. This will be an issue that even if becomes “complete” will be forever fragile so never really over.
  3. Working harder, or doing more will not necessarily mean that it will be resolved sooner.

Some things you are just going to need to “let go” in that moment. However, it doesn’t mean that you are letting it go forever.

You will be returning to the issue, it may not be advantageous to focus on it now.

And so we park it.

We put it in our mental parking lot.

Write it down on the park it for now list, and you will come back to it later. There may be circumstances that will change, when suddenly it becomes the time to focus on the issue. Timing can sometimes be everything and you aren’t going to be able to solve everything at once.

So be gentle with yourself. Trying to force the pace to speed up will sometimes be shooting yourself in the foot. Review, and go over what you have control over and what you do not.

The machine would love for you to burn out and go away.

Self care and rest is resistance because it keeps you in the game.

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What is in our Control?

Do you want something to completely suck out your energy and make you contemplate quitting?

Try to control things that are completely out of your control.

You will drive yourself up the wall.

One of the things that I have found to give me peace amongst chaos is to reflect on what I have control over and what I do not. What is out of my control, I need to wash it off and let it go.

When the feelings are intense, I find the only way to do this is to either write it down or draw out a mind map. But some visual representation that I can post where I work is a constant reminder that I have found to be incredibly helpful.

Systems are huge.

They are interconnected.

It’s incredible how some things that are so small can make a difference, and yet some things can be such huge successes, and the machine fights back.

Do what you can. Develop a plan for what you can control.

It’s those little step-by-step tasks that matter the most. But if you are involved in systemic advocacy, there are going to be a lot of people and a lot of relationships that you will not even have access to. You will be dependent on other people. Focus on you and the rest; wash it off. Do the ritual to end your advocacy for that day. Close the book. Blow out the candle. Turn on a 3 min guided meditation on YouTube and carry on. Do something you enjoy. These issues aren’t going away; it is a work in progress. No matter how hard you work, it won’t be solved today.