Am I out of time yet?
I was in a webinar sponsored by a wellness organization recently. At some point during their comments, each speaker nervously asked, “how am I doing on time?” Many of the speakers apologized for not being more succinct, even if they were on time. It was nerve-wracking to watch. I wondered what’s going on inside the organization to cause this anxiety.
It reminded me of working in philanthropy. Grant making is often a top-down process used in controlling ways. Monetary donations are bundled with anxiety and unrealistic expectations.
Why do well-intentioned organizations operate in such unhealthy ways?
Then I thought about my own approach to work. During most of 2021, I tracked how I spent my time. I felt a sense of worthiness when I had 9- or 10-hour days. As an entrepreneur, I longed for indicators that I was on the right track while building my business. It consumed me.
Hmmm…IT consumed me…?
Of course not, I’d been consuming myself. I was exploiting my own fear of failure and doing harm, even though my conscious mind said, “you’re doing good work.” That’s how exploitation happens in wellness organizations and in philanthropy too. I see it also happens to my hard-working daughters, whose teenage lives are packed with mountains of expectations. Everywhere I look, people are drained and edgy. This type of exploitation happens all around.
How could we all be doing this?
I recently reconnected with Dr. Kathleen Allen, one of the most thought-provoking, wide-lens, long-time-horizon thinkers I’ve ever met. She’s also a cherished friend, mentor, and colleague. She described to me how we’re transitioning from an extractive era to a regenerative era, an idea being developed here and represented by the illustration below.
The graphic shows just how “meta” this exploitive pattern really is. We all live in a culture of consumption. This culture requires the large-scale and efficient removal, use, and dumping of resources, including human resources. It needs humans to be productive and obedient, a recipe for stress and workaholism. The most common symptoms of work related stress include fatigue, anxiety, sleeping difficulties, overwhelm, and aggression.
In essence, our culture extracts human wellness.
Like other natural resources, the energy of wellness is “mined” and transformed into monetary profits that very few people benefit from. Judging by the news, the accumulation of wealth doesn’t seem to support their wellness, either.
Wisdom as antidote to exploitation
This is why wisdom is radically counter cultural. It illuminates that we are already enough, and this moment is enough. Any of us can choose to step off the treadmill of wellness extraction by changing how we treat ourselves and others. The benefits of mindfulness are elegantly layered: we experience immediate, personal relief, which ripples into our relationships with families and colleagues.
Here’s an example of how our exploitive culture is reinforced in the life of one person:
An organizational leader believes they need to repeatedly prove they are worthy of their role. They suffer from imposter syndrome, rooted in a basic limiting belief that they are not enough. They feel anxious of being “found out.” When people question their choices, they become defensive and impulsively use their power to shut down feedback. All this compels the leader to only hire people who look, act, and think within their personal comfort zone. This minimizes exposure to diverse ideas that might make the leader feel uncomfortable by exposing gaps in their own abilities. As a result, they operate in an “echo chamber” where the potential for innovation, agility, learning, compassion, and wisdom are all extracted from the opportunity of their work.
In the chart below, I borrow from Tema Okun’s brilliant work to compare our dominant culture with a mindfulness approach. The contrast is obviously stark.
Exploitive Cultural Norm
Description
Mindfulness Antidote
Perfectionism
Equate “professional” with compliance to external standards. Focus on what’s wrong (rather than appreciating what is right) and obsessively seek to eliminate whatever doesn’t meet those standards, because the standards are evidence of personal and professional value.
Recognize that self and others are intrinsically worthwhile and growing.
Defensiveness and fear of open conflict
New ideas that are experienced as uncomfortable and threatening are shut down. People are afraid to speak their truth.
Welcome discomfort and approached it with inquiry
Urgency
Arbitrary deadlines drive workaholism and its unrealistic expectations, rushed behavior, and short-term decision-making.
Allow for the unfolding of embodied, intuitive, and spiritual ways of knowing
Fear
Fear is used to manipulate people through false but powerful sense of security. Fear is used to disconnect people from themselves, one another, and Nature.
Foster the direct experience of interdependence and wholeness.
This is how well-intentioned, mission-driven people participate in exploitation. We are wounded by a dehumanizing culture, and we act in dehumanizing ways toward ourselves and others as a result. We don’t know how to do it differently…we believe this is what “success” requires. And so even our efforts to create positive change perpetuate the problems.
Gratefully, the antidote is right here inside us.
Healing as resistance
Mindfulness teaches that our basic essence is open-hearted, spacious, energetic awareness. This is a beautiful way of being, and it’s always available to us. Sometimes we experience it in meaningful conversations or other peak moments in life. But normally we have no idea it’s there.
It’s as though you have the physical ability to climb a mountain, but don’t believe you do. You think, “I couldn’t do that” because you’ve spent life putting on weighted clothing and forgot the weight isn’t you. Most people need a little help removing the most excessive layers, until eventually they can do it on their own. Soon you discover there’s an agile, effortless, expansive person inside, one with the ability and desire to climb the mountain with glee.
As you deepen in wisdom, you reconnect with this innate person inside. It is a healing practice that targets the exploitive effects of our dominant culture, such as:
- Perpetual urgency
- Criticism of self and others
- Reactivity under stress
- Disconnection from emotions, intuition, and somatic awareness
- Defensiveness and inability to endure the discomfort of new ideas and situations
- Coping behaviors that avoid conflict, such as numbing, fawning, and withdrawal
- Inability to effectively identify and communicate needs
- Using covert manipulation to get needs met
- Over-thinking, top-down thinking, and rigidity
- Unprocessed emotions that block forward movement
- Fear of vulnerability
- Self-isolation
- Perfectionism
- Workaholism
- Disconnection from other cultures
- Disconnection from Nature
So...are you exploiting yourself and/or others?
We are fish and cultural norms are our water. I’ve never met anyone raised in the West who hasn’t perpetuated these norms in their life. But I have met many people are healing. As they heal, they become generative forces in the world, not exploitive ones.
How might you be less exploitive and more generative in the ways you leverage wealth to create positive change?
