How we keep going (and returning)

• Seasonal pacing
• Spiral praxis
• Making a PACT
  • Promise
  • Action you can track with a simple ‘Yes/No’
  • Capacity within your current abilities and control
  • Temporary time frame with triggers and deadlines
• Call to action:
  • Make a PACT: How will you release pressure on yourself to cover EVERYTHING in a single summer?
  • Check out the BONUS RESOURCES tab on this page

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Hello Friends Welcome today to keep her to getting shit done. Okay, celebrate. As you notice I changed my hair. So today we’re going to talk about how we keep going and why we keep returning using something I like to call spiral praxis. I need sound effects. Get a grip, okay? Today we’re talking about pacing ourselves to resist false urgency, resisting consumerism and disposal culture using spiral praxis and how we move from intention to action using a strategy I called pact. I made that up so proud of myself.

So in pacing ourselves to resist false urgency, anything about how supremacy culture and capitalism dictates all or nothing. We are compelled to sustain unsustainable cycles of sprinting and to burnout and going and going and going, kind of like cancer. So we’re also expected to maintain a certain level of intensity and excellence and a fast pace, regardless of what season of life we’re in. Regardless of whether or not we’re sick or tired, what what literal season it is out in the winter, whether or not we need to get our kids ready for school or we need to shovel the driveway. So in this space, there is no behind, there is no pace that you are expected to go in. Please be patient with yourself and with other people. And the more that we can do this, the more that we can model that it is okay to slow down and work at a pace that works for us where we are right now. So you’ll get more about this in the bonus resources in the portal. Go check it out. So let’s talk about what is spiral praxis. So Praxis is the concept of taking the theory and putting it into action. Sometimes it’s it’s a collection of like, what is the practice of what it means to be an activist to be a parent. So if we think about how, again, capitalism runs on disposability, in order to buy more, you need to be willing to throw out the stuff that you were using before. We need we’re pressured to consume everything as fast as we can all at once if possible. guilty for reading while watching TV while eating. And we’re also expected to once we learn something once once we review something one time, we’re expected to fully comprehend it, process it internalize it with in no time at all and be experts at it, which is just not the way that things work. So in contrast to capitalism, and all or nothing culture, but spiral Praxis runs on principles that have accumulation. So we every year, we revisit the same concepts, and we accumulate knowledge, accumulate what it means for us, and we look at it through a new lens of the different seasons of life that we’re in and the different years and the different current events that are going on. I kind of picture this as like a spiral going up. But it’s not a linear progression of growth, sometimes we just stay in the same spiral. And it actually requires some discomfort and some effort to to keep spiraling in a different way to change our lens and revisit these ideas. It’s so hard not to rush through this. And it’s important that we remember that we can celebrate the early cycles as much as the later ones. I know like, for a lot of us were learning how to ride a bike learning how to swim. We wanted it before and we and after our goal was to learn how to swim to learn how to ride a bike. And we weren’t taught to celebrate the fact that we did not yet know how to ride a bike. This was learning this was a new experience for us. And now when but at the same time, we’re expected to look back on those memories as fond as like childhood stages and growth. But what if we’re allowed to enjoy it, then because I don’t know about you. But my kids are constantly frustrating, frustrated at the things they cannot yet do. And it’s kind of sucking all the joy out of learning. So what if we learned how to celebrate not yet knowing how to do something, just being aware of it, being aware that there’s a problem being aware that we will get better at addressing that problem and getting and get better at contributing to solving that problem. So it’s important that we celebrate the early cycles as much as later ones. Right now, next week, we’re about to launch our first summer accelerator. And I’m very excited because it’s going to be probably as crappy as it ever was. We finished our first winter winter incubator last winter And one of the things I heard the most from people was, we will never have that moment that first initial experimental collection, the next incubator is going to be awesome. But that beginning newness, we actually took time to celebrate it and enjoy it. And like that we were feeling things out. And it was actually really nice. So what if we just carry that energy and keep it moving forward? So another thing that spiral, the spiral Praxis framework relies on is that it is responsive. Because I know that capitalist growth tells us that we constantly have to go up, if not linear than hyperbolic, has to get better and faster, all the time constantly.

But what if, if we need to repeat a spiral, if we need to stay in our safe space, if we need to put a pause that is totally okay. And that is a part of the process. So it’s important that we maintain that this needs to be a responsive process. So if we think in terms of UC learning frameworks, where they talk about exposure, followed by awareness, followed by processing, followed by integrating it into your life, followed by innovating new ways of being, you can kind of look at it through that lens if that’s helpful. But if we think about learning how learning how to ride a bike, you’re not immediately an expert after your first time trying to ride a bike, it takes many years. And then there’s there’s a, there’s more lenses that come through it. There’s learning traffic laws, and all these kinds of things. And if we approach it with a mindset of like, I could still learn more from this, it makes the whole process way more fun. Because for me jumping on a bike doesn’t seem that interesting, because I’ve been taught now that you know how to ride a bike. There’s no more left to learn. But what if I approach it like that? There’s a lot more stuff to bikes and I don’t know yet. That’d be fine. Right? Okay. So another element of spiral Praxis is integrating, sorry, I’m looking at notes. It’s focusing on one thing at a time, because we tend to want to grab giant handfuls of whatever we’re doing everything related to it mastered immediately. But what if we relied on each other and relied on people who have done them through this particular spiral before, to kind of guide us and give us little bits at a time saying like, Okay, now you do this. Now you do that. And I have this problem a lot with my kids, where I’m trying to teach them how to wash dishes. And what they want to focuses focus on is doing something 14 steps beyond what they have mastered at the moment. And they’re so focused on that one thing that I have trouble branching, I’m like, Okay, you can learn how to cook up how to cook a stew. But first, I got lost in my metaphors cooking. Let’s move to cooking from dishwashing. First, you need to learn how to boil water. First, you need to learn how to fill the pot. And if unless we’ve been through that style before, it’s actually really hard to know, what do we do first, and next and the time after that. So that’s why we do this in a collective is because everyone’s at a different spiral. Everyone’s in a different direction with different perspectives. And it’s really helpful to have it, at least for the summer accelerator and the collectives that we do pieced into a linear progression of events. So that way, instead of being like, oh, I need to do this and this and this, we can be like, You know what we will get to that, for now give yourself permission just to focus on this one thing today. Okay. And the other thing is, we don’t have to focus on that one thing and master it, we just have to think about that one thing, process it for however long, we need to process it and then move on. I like to have a set amount of time that I process something because otherwise I will ruminate on it. And I will feel a compulsion to master all of the details before I allow myself to move on to the next thing. So let’s hold this a little bit loosely. Let’s, let’s approach spiral praxis and the idea that we’re constantly moving so it’s okay to to slowly dip into something and then move on and we don’t have to fully fill out all the worksheets, and complete all the assignments and talk to every single accountability partner and integrate it into every single aspect of our life right now, we can just do small tweaks that we can do with what we have right now at our current capacity. So we can just you know, release our death grip on needing to worry about or plan for every single possible future. That’s my hope. So every day we will in summary accelerator provides signpost so we can stay agile and responsive without falling behind and you’ll see that this this process is also integrated into the books for littles monthly resource roundups. You’re not expected to cover every single topic every single month. Just pick something, play around with it. And whatever you don’t get to you can come back to next year. Okay, this allows us to stay a little bit agile and responsive without falling behind because there is no such thing as falling behind and in what we’re doing So it’s okay to skip things.

If we miss a couple of days, if we want to binge read everything, review everything. That’s totally cool. But it’s also it also doesn’t mean that we are canceled and we are no longer welcome in the community just because we missed a few resources. It’s okay to dip in and out, it’s okay to, it’s okay to still come to events and still engage, it’s actually really important to still engage in conversations, even if we have not fully completely processed every single resource that I give you, because I promise you, oh, no promise, it’s probably not possible. The summer accelerator and the things that I produce are not designed to be consumed all at once, in a linear fashion. They’re designed to be revisited year after year, based on the summer, based on the winter, based on whatever you’re doing at the moment. So it is okay to skip. It’s okay to slow down. It’s okay to pause, it’s okay to come back to it. And I will provide the triggers that remind you to come back to it, whether it’s emails every summer that say hey, like come back to the summer accelerator and come come hang out with us again. Or it’s the monthly round ups where I’m like, Hey, we’re doing July again, let’s talk about our July topics. Let’s read some books with our kids. Okay, so there’s one more framework that I want to introduce to you that I am finding helpful to move from just like it’s one thing to passively absorb all of the stuff that people put out. And I am guilty of putting out way too much stuff for people to absorb, so they don’t have time to actually put it into practice. So we’re going to follow up, whatever we’re doing, and I urge this, I urge you to please make this as simple as possible. And then whatever you do make it even simpler until it feels ridiculous, is we use a pact framework. So it’s P A C T and a pact framework, this will be really helpful if you download the guide book, right below the video on the portal because it’s it spells it out for you. But the P is for promise to follow through with a specific person. And that’s a part of accountability, you’re much more likely to actually do something if you promise someone, particularly someone you care about and whose opinion of you you care about that you will do it, whether it’s your kids, whether it’s your fellow accelerator members, whether it’s me, make a promise to a specific person, and then make it an action. Not something like learn because you can’t really figure learning is kind of passive, but like read, spend time on call somebody reach out, review this article, whatever make it an action A is for action that you can track with a simple yes or no. Once you have done it, you will know that you have done it and you can actually make a checkbox next to it. And there’s a definitive before and after on whether or not you have or have not done. That’s why I say stuff like learn or master convinced this kind of fuzzy action words are gonna be a little bit harder to say yes or no one. So pick a very, very simple action that you control that is within your capacity to actually do see is for capacity within your current abilities and control. Like I said, it has to be something you can do and you can’t rely on other people to do it. So something like make $10,000 next next month, that’s not within your control completely. You can email a billion people, you can get people to sign signatures. But you can’t really control whether or not you pass legislation. So instead of saying pass legislation to reinstate freedom for abortion rights and reproductive rights by September of next year, is not fully within your control. And I really wish it was but it is not. So what action can we take towards that whether it’s emailing a friend, whether it’s writing an article, whether it’s writing letters to your elected officials,

attending a certain number of citizens per month or something like that, that is within your control. So the T is for temporary timeframe, with triggers and deadlines. Like I said, with supremacy, culture and capitalism, we tend to value things that we perceive as lasting forever. Obviously, that is an illusion, nothing lasts forever. But we were sold on this myth because if we believe that it lasts forever, then it seems like it’s higher value, and you’re more likely to invest in it. But it’s really impressed, important that we embrace the temporary nature of the work that we do, particularly because we’re parents, and each stage of our kid’s life is deeply temporary. But also part of activism means policies are constantly changing. Cultural norms are constantly changing, and we need to stay responsive to this. So the shortest possible time frames that we can work on things makes it much more doable, much more likely that we’ll actually see seed and make it tight it triggers and deadlines like I said, if if your commitment is to attend every summer accelerator Hello friends welcome to day two caper to getting shit done. Okay, celebrate, as you noticed I changed my hair. So today we’re gonna talk about how we keep going and why we keep returning using something my phone overheated, and my video cut off. If our goal is to attend every single summer accelerator for the rest of our lives, that’s probably not going to happen. But we can make a pact to always keep that on the calendar for next year. We can make a pact to to schedule the rest of our year just for next year to come back to it. That’s the kind of thing that we can actually control within a temporary timeframe. Okay, so before my phone overheats again, as we chew on the concepts that we introduce for each day, including this one, we reflect on how we can make these ideas work for us. And then we make a pact on how we will integrate activism into our daily life with our kids and careers. I’m not going to babysit with babysit you on this. I’ve introduced the concept of the pact and they are included in the the guide books that I include with all of the chapters and all the keepers. But I am not going to actively call on everyone to constantly do it and make sure everyone’s doing their homework because we’re grownups. And that’s not how we do it. Maybe the pact framework doesn’t work for you. And I don’t want you to feel terrible about it if it doesn’t, and want you to feel free to do whatever you’re doing in this current cycle of your spiral, and maybe revisit it again next year. So what we would like to do for today are call to action is two parts one make a pact that centers How will you release pressure on yourself to cover everything in a simple in a single summer? Because I know I’m throwing a lot at you, and how are you going to resist the pressure or that internal compulsion to make sure that you perfectly process every single thing that I throw at you? What are you going to leave for next year? What what is the cutoff at a small amount of time that you’re willing to engage, create some boundaries for yourself and then share them with us so we know what they are. And then part two is check out the bonus resources to have in this capers. This capers little web page thing like right below the video, there’s some tabs, there’s some bonus resources and they there will be a bonus resources below all of the video tabs for all of our capers and it’ll be grant. Okay. Thank you. And we’re going to work on the ritual of transforming awareness into action. Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.

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