3 Simple Ways to Increase Joy and Resist Oppressive Systems

Valerie Friedlander 0:00
Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of Mindset Unlimited: Mindset Tips, Tools, and Inspiration for Women in a Time of Change. I’m your host, Valerie Friedlander, Certified Leadership Coach, Sociologist, Intersectional Feminist Artist, Mom, and Nerd, and I help women who are in demanding careers create meaningful success. So stepping outside of the patterns that we all have gotten accustomed to, and we go, something isn’t working, and something needs to change. Sometimes you know what that is, and sometimes you don’t. And if you are someone who knows what that is, then I will help you take the actions that you need to do the thing because so often our patterns keep us stuck in the thing that we’re already doing and resisting the change because change is difficult. And if you’re not sure, I’ll help you figure out what that change is. So today we are talking about three simple ways to increase joy in your life and resist oppressive systems. Yay! So I wanted to talk about this because so often we think of resistance as like a lot of effort and energy and kind of a downer, like ugh, like I have to do this and I have to do this because things are bad and I don’t really want to do that. I don’t want to have to do it. And there are some things that are like that, and there are a lot of things that we can do to resist the way things are by building into what we want, and what we want in a big picture way is joy. We want joy, so you don’t build joy. You don’t build into joy by just doing things that feel additionally oppressive, right? You build into joy by doing joyful things, and a lot of times we don’t think we have the room, we don’t have the access, we don’t have the the whatever to be able to do that, and I want you to know that you do. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. That doesn’t mean it’s easy because some of resistance has to do with unlocking the resistance inside ourselves, based on all of our internalization of the way things currently Are and it doesn’t have to be that hard or that complicated. So that is what we’re talking about today. The three things that I am going to dig into to share with you are wonder, rest, and connection. I’ve talked about all of these in pieces, and I’m just pulling them all together in short, simple. Let’s let’s make this happen. So, without further ado, let’s get started. I’m starting with wonder because it will help us with the other ones. So wonder is very related to curiosity, but I’m using wonder as the focal point rather than curiosity because there’s another quality to wonder that kind of transcends that cognitive curiosity. Now, I think accessing cognitive curiosity can very much help. So, if it helps you to be like, “Huh, I’m curious about that, but often it’s, “I wonder, I wonder about this, I wonder about that, like giving yourself room to not have an answer, and this is radical right now because there is a lot of movement away from any space of not knowing, and this has been true for a while. Like this has come up with clients for quite a while, where there’s this pressure to have an answer and a lot of shame when people don’t immediately have an answer. I have seen this the past 10 years of working with clients where there’s a shame response that happens when they can’t immediately answer when they’re like I don’t know, especially in workplaces, because there has been a push to always know, to always have an answer, and to always deliver it confidently. And I think this is one of the reasons why AI is creating so many issues around this, and so one of the reasons I thought of this is something that should be talked about is I was watching Caterina Doria, who I’ve mentioned before on this podcast, who is an AI ethicist, talking about an article that just came out or a research paper that just came out about AI and how it is eliminating people’s willingness to admit uncertainty, even when AI provides false information and correct information, there was an experiment done involving over 3000 participants, and the willingness to say “I don’t know” collapsed from 44% in a baseline group to just 3% when AI advice was available, people became three times less accurate and twice as confident in their responses, and so this is something that I think is really dangerous. I’ve thought it was dangerous from the get go, but you know we talk about people being overly confident, particularly like white men being overly confident in the workplace, and we’ve talked about imposter syndrome and like all of these things and the idea of confidence and how weaponized it is. Really, I don’t think I put it that way before, but that’s essentially what it is. Of like, you have to be confident. You have to act confident, even if you aren’t actually confident. And we see the harm that it’s doing with a lot of people in power acting all confident and saying just atrocious things, blatantly incorrect things. Lots of people are saying we’re in a post-truth society, and it’s because well, we can just say whatever we want, and if we say it confidently enough, people will believe it. There was an article I heard on NPR a while ago talking about how people don’t like ambivalence. If a doctor is like, “Well, we could do this, or we could do this, these are your options, and there was a choice involved. People didn’t want to see that doctor anymore. They wanted to see a different doctor who was much more like, “This is the answer. This is what we’re gonna do, and that attitude, that mentality, is understandable when you feel really uncertain. When everything feels out of it, we want that stability. We want that sense of stability, and it doesn’t leave room for for anything. Really, it doesn’t allow room for possibility. It doesn’t allow room for for learning, for growth. Like it is very. I mean, it’s like the epitome of fixed mindset. It’s like this is it, and it doesn’t even matter if it’s right. It’s like this is the this is the only way it can possibly be, which leaves out room for possibilities. I mean, a big part of authoritarianism and a big part of the dynamics that we’re experiencing right now have to do with a lack of imagination, and really, I wouldn’t even just say a lack of imagination. I would say the suppression of imagination. Oppression only works across multiple people when the people willingly turn over their power and say, “Well, I don’t know the answer, you know the answer. I want somebody who who confidently knows the answer. I’m afraid of the “I don’t know” space, and so you’re confident in the answer, and so I want you to tell me the answer instead of going, “I wonder what could happen, what could be possible, and I’m willing to sit with you in the not knowing and generate new ideas and new ways. Okay, so what does this mean for you? It means wonder. Be willing to sit in the discomfort of not having an answer. I talk a lot about pausing. Allow yourself room to pause. That can be a really powerful space. Do it somewhere where you feel safe to do that, or at least more safe. Like I understand in a workplace scenario, it can be really, really uncomfortable and potentially dangerous to to to To take a lot more space, maybe take a little bit of space. Maybe say, let me get back to you about that. I need to go use the bathroom. I mean, that’s like a totally legit. Like, I I need to go run this errand real quick. I will get back to you. I’m in the middle of something right now, but I will get back to you. Give yourself space. You can make something up to give yourself space because it’s that powerful. Maybe it’s at home. Hey, we’re having a conversation.

Valerie Friedlander 9:27
We’re having an intense discussion. I need to think about what you just said for a minute. Let’s take a let’s take a break and we’ll come back to that conversation. One of the things that I think is really helpful when we’re dealing with massive uncertainty, and so it’s really hard to sit in it. And I don’t know, is to have a container, to have a space for yourself to be in a wondering mindset, a wondering environment, like. Okay, we don’t know. There’s all this uncertainty. Okay, here is a place where I can wonder. So maybe it is like I go out for a walk and I wonder about what I see, or I’m going to engage this conversation and I’m going to come into it with wonder. Like there are lots of different approaches, but giving yourself a space, a container for uncertainty. I’m going to allow myself to not know the answer for a little while, and maybe it’s oh, I wonder about this. And rather just getting online and looking it up, whether you’re using AI or whether you’re just using Google or whatever. Pause. I wonder about that. Let me just take a minute and wonder about that. So give yourself room to not have an answer, rather than immediately going somewhere. Oh, somebody sent me a text. I’m not sure what that means. I wonder what it could mean. What are some possibilities of what that could mean? What would I want to ask this person to understand better what it means, rather than asking AI to decipher it for you. And this leans right into communication, community, connection, connect with other people. And I’m kind of jumping over rest. I’m coming back to rest, and I think I’m jumping to connection because when we don’t wonder, we stop connecting. We we start assuming, and assumptions make an ass out of you and me, right? Do you remember that? Like it’s true. And what can AI tell you that the person who’s actually living in the body of the person who said the words that they said? How can AI know more than that person? And here’s the thing: is that sometimes asking a question with another person, say, “What did you mean by that? is a beautiful invitation for them to wonder about themselves and connect more with themselves. And what did I mean about that? Did I mean that? Like, oh, I hear what you said, and what you heard in what I said. Is that what I meant? Did I say what I actually meant? Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we don’t say what we actually mean. We say something else, and it’s not because we are intending to be misleading. It’s just because that’s what came out of our mouths, and we’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I I had a really high emotional charge around that. I was really upset and angry, and I said things that weren’t really what I what I wanted to say. They were based in feelings. They were my feelings words, and so they meant something. They were important, and it’s not really what I wanted to say. It it wasn’t helpful, and it didn’t move us forward. It didn’t build connection. It didn’t help us grow, and so those are the things that I want to feed into. Is I wonder, I wonder what I meant. I wonder what you meant. I wonder what we could create. I wonder what’s possible. So leaning into our imagination and our creativity, and again, the systems will push that down. They will suppress that because they want us to just follow the power and do what the people who can feign the most confidence say to do, and they’re not necessarily right. Just like AI is not necessarily right, so using your space, taking that pause, sitting in the discomfort of I don’t know, and that’s okay. It’s okay that I don’t know. You don’t have to know. You’re not a machine. Life isn’t built off of machines. So tap into the wonder that is available to you, and if you need ways to do that outside, you know, touch grass, go for a walk. Those things can create that sense of wonder. Go out where you can see the stars. Wonder. Okay, so that’s one wondering. Two is resting. Systems want us exhausted because we don’t wonder. We don’t get curious.

Valerie Friedlander 14:31
We are more survival oriented. We are more constricted and more blinders on. I just have to get through this when our bodies are exhausted, when our minds are exhausted. An amazing book that I have recommended before, and I will recommend again, is Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. I just saw her do a reading; it was amazing, and I. Recommend her book enough. I was gonna read quotes, but I realize that I’m. It’s gonna. I’m gonna get lost in all the things. It’s so hard to pick. Anyway, I I really really encourage and and I love listening to that book too. Listening to her read it is like listening to a prayer of rest. I find even just listening to that book to be restful, and she does explain that rest isn’t just about naps. Naps are great, but it’s also about what what nourishes your soul, what allows you room to dream, to wonder, to be in a space of possibility. So even like five minutes where you rest and you listen, or you look around and you wonder about things, or you just sit and you just be, it’s rooted in the idea that you are already enough. You are already worthy. You don’t have to earn rest. You are worthy of care, and one thing that I have emphasized time and again is that even if you are not being cared for or you haven’t been cared for, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be cared for. And we are constantly taught. We we’ve been swimming in this messaging that we have to earn care, we have to earn rest, we have to earn it first, and that we’re not worthy until we’ve earned it. Like, oh, you’re just lazy. No, we’re worthy of rest, worthy of care, and creating pockets of that. One of the things that I also want to differentiate because I think it’s really important, and I might do another episode where I kind of dig further into this, but I think it’s it’s worth in this saying quickly. One of the things we have that like work hard, play hard kind of dynamic that gets talked about, like oh, it’s great to like work hard, play hard, and that’s part of hustle culture, or as Tricia says, grind culture. And often I hear juxtaposed the idea of what is energizing and what is draining. I want to do the things that are energizing. Ooh, that energizes me. Often with clients, I have observed that when people talk about things that are energizing, they are still things that use energy. They are things that take a lot of energy, and people don’t recognize it as depleting in some ways of their energy. That it uses energy because it isn’t as much of a drain, as the things that are depleting, the things that like really just feel like drains of energy that take basically the depleting things, quote unquote, depleting things require more energy to do. The energizing things require less energy to do, and you might come away with some energy from that, it might recharge to a certain extent, but a lot of times we don’t recognize that the energizing things do take energy, and then we end up annoyed, disappointed, frustrated at ourselves that we can’t do more of it, and sometimes it’s because we’re not noticing the things that are additionally depleting. Like a lot of my clients who have ADHD and the multiple steps that are involved in doing a thing, and they’re like, “Oh, I really want to do the thing, and why am I not doing the thing? And it’s so frustrating that I’m not doing the thing. And it’s like, “Oh, well, there’s like multiple micro steps to actually doing the thing, and those things I’m not even accounting for, and so I’m exhausted doing those little micro things. They get in the way, and then I don’t do the thing that I actually want to do because of the micro things that are in the way. So I like to do an exercise where we break out three different buckets. One is about depleting. What are the things that you do on a regular basis that are depleting, that drain energy, that are exhausting, that just take a lot of energy? What are the things that are energizing?

Valerie Friedlander 19:15
The things that you’re excited to do, the things that you want to do, that are doings. They’re still doings. They’re still active things that take energy to do, but you like doing them, and you’re excited to do them, and they feel like they have a lot of energy in them for you. And then, what are the rejuvenating things? What are the restful things? The things that are purely about replenishing yourself. That are about receiving and taking in, and nurturing you. We need a balance. Obviously, the the depleting things we want is the smaller end of things, but. The energizing and the nourishing, the replenishing, the restful things. We need to have both of those things, and too often we don’t realize that we need those restful things because we’re so focused on either the energizing and the depleting. So that’s an exercise that I invite you to do: is actually create some buckets and think about what are those things for you, because again, the restful things, the rejuvenating things, often we don’t give room for until we’ve done the other things. They’re the quote-unquote rewards for the quote-unquote productive things, the things that took energy, I shouldn’t have to replenish my energy until I have used it. That’s not. I mean, there is so much that’s using your energy that like you don’t even think about. So, yeah, you. That’s that’s not. Let’s put that to it aside, and no. And if you want a beautiful reminder and support, definitely check out rest is resistance, and take a moment to put those buckets together for yourself, so that you remember that you need a you need those in your life. You need to balance out those things and the replenishing, restful, rejuvenating things are not the back burner things. Those are an intrinsic, important part of your humanity to nurture you and who you are. Okay, so that is number two, and number three is connection. And so I touched on that already. And to go a little bit further, some of the creators that I just I love have have shared some beautiful things. I’m I’m going to have links in the show notes to some things that they talk about, and I will also have links to the Instagrams that I was inspired from, and then followed the breadcrumbs to look up the things. Because wondering what is this about? Tell me more. I would like to know. So one of the things that is really important is connection with other people, because that wondering together, that collective dreaming-like we can’t absorb all the collective horrors by ourselves. We can’t hold all of that, and also we can’t make collective change by ourselves. There are things that we can do individually, certainly, and we need each other. We are communal creatures, so I’ve talked about this before, and continue to like. I do a lot of individual work, and I believe in self care. I think a lot of times we need to do self care before we can be open to collective care, and we need collective care. We need other people in our life. So, all time Isaac talked about the value of activism in one of his posts. There was an article written by Clara and Casser about how a study was done showing that students involved in activist tasks reported higher well-being. So it really makes a difference. It’s not just an imagined thing. Being involved with other people, being connected to other people, help us Hold the space and help us move forward together, and help us feel better. As I mentioned in the intro, there’s a lot of talk about like, oh, these things that I have to do and they’re exhausting. I mentioned the importance Of how we connect to each other, and it’s it’s hard. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna make that an easy thing to do when we haven’t built that muscle. It does take extra effort, and sometimes building into community is asking for help, asking a question, wondering, so wondering, resting, building our capacity to nurture others, but also to receive nurturing, to be with others in work together. And I have personally found this someone going out knocking doors for political candidates and talking about like the school board in Chicago and things like that, talking to my neighbors can be kind of intimidating.

Valerie Friedlander 24:48
Like I’m gonna knock on the door and be like, “Hey, would you sign this petition for somebody to be on the ballot? Right, like things like that. It’s like, what am I gonna get? And I, you know, yeah, there there are some things that are. Some interactions that haven’t been amazing, and there have been some really amazing interactions and really just invigorating. And working with other people doing that feels like I’m building with others, and that’s really the thing that just fuels it all. Is like I’m not alone. I’m with other people doing meaningful work, building into the world that I want to live in. I am participating in building the world that I want to live in. And I’m not saying you have to do really big things, but maybe when you go stand in line to vote, you’ll look around and wonder about the people that you’re standing with, and you’ll wonder about what’s possible, and what will we do next? Because voting is important. I hope everybody who’s listening to this votes early. Votes-it’s just so important that democracy is a participatory sport, as it were. I think there’s a better way of saying that. But anyway, you understand what I’m saying. Vote, and then know that that’s not the end of it. There will always be more to do because we choose what we’re creating. That’s up to us. So, one of the other things that so Amelia Ennis Jr. who I have shared before, talked in one of the recent Instagrams about the normalization of deviance, which is a term coined by sociologist Diane Vaughn, which is the refusal to normalize horrible things, and what happens? What what that, or which is when we don’t refuse to normalize horrible things, it is this something awful happens, nothing happens to address it, and then it just kind of spirals. It continues. We keep going, while the big things are not things we can do anything about. We only have so much power when we work with other people. We we expand. I talked about this in terms of like the idea of like Captain Planet or Voltron or Power Rangers or whatever. You know, like oh, we’re we’re dealing with something that is bigger than us, so we need to join our forces and and be bigger like Avengers or whatever, right? Like plenty of examples of doing this, and it doesn’t have to be this big thing. It could be having your neighbors over for coffee or for a meal. Have a potluck. Maybe when it’s nice out, invite people to sit on the front lawn and chat. Bring a chair. Let’s have a conversation. Doesn’t it have to be a big involved production? It can be small. Ask a friend out to coffee. Call a friend and say, “Hey, how are you? Like, really, what’s going on? Because when we connect with other people who are having similar feelings, it helps us. We we regulate together. We feel us alone. We feel like we’re we’re part of something. And I think that you know it’s really easy to get disillusioned and and feel like everything is awful. And when you know that there’s something that you can do, that’s building into the world that you want to be in. What kind of world do you want to be in? Wonder about that. I wonder, maybe I don’t know exactly, but I wonder what would a world look like if I had neighbors that I was friends with. What would I do? What would it take for me to do one of those things? Anything like that? Oh, I might ask them if I run out of sugar for some sugar. I think that’s kind of cliche, but you know those sorts of things, and there are ways to do that online. And if we can connect with each other in person, there’s a lot of power in that. And sometimes we can’t do that, so we need to be with other people. So That connection, starting with the self, starting with wondering and resting and caring and nurturing and allowing nurturing, inviting and nurturing, inviting and nurturing from other people, being filled enough to nurture right back in that way of connecting with each other is so powerful toward building, as Isaac says, a world that loves us back.

Valerie Friedlander 29:50
We can love into it and receive love from it. That’s where we start. There is, I’ve got all these books because. I was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna read stuff, and I’m like, I this episode will go on forever if I read stuff because y’all know that’s what I do. But I wanted to read just a little thing from “Let This Radicalize You” by Kelly Hayes and Mariam Kaba. I’ll show you the book. This is the book. In the introduction that is called “We Can Only Survive Together” by Mariame Kaba, there’s a quote by Hazel Henderson. It is, if we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles. We can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic. And I loved that because we don’t know, we don’t know enough. So many things are still possible, and we just don’t know what it’s going to look like. There was another thing I wanted to read here for you. It is Ash Williams. He him. It’s in “Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis. Great book. I also I recommend you grabbing this. is edited by Kelly Hayes, and it’s a whole bunch of little essays. Read this if you feel like you’re falling. Read this if. Read this if. And so you can jump around or you can read all the way through. But this chapter is read this if you’re hurting and want to find your people. And Ash Williams writes at the end of this, given where we have been and where it seems like things are headed, here’s what I can tell you about how to keep moving forward. Keep nurturing the relationships you’ve been building over the past few years. Figure out where and with whom you feel poured into. Think about what you have to offer others. So much more will be required from us in this time, but I think this is a generative starting place, and so I just should pause. I’m going to pause with that, and I want to loop back to what I started with, with all time Isaac, and again, all the links to the books, to the Instagrams, and to the articles that the Instagrams referenced will be in the show notes, and that while it may take some initial energy to get started because a lot of times we do need that push, we need that oomph to get started. That the study that was done by Clara Kasser showing that students involved in an activist task reported higher well-being really speaks to the power of connecting, of being in community with other people toward a goal, and there are lots of goals. There are lots of things that we can work towards, and it doesn’t always have to be working against things. It could be working in a community garden. It could be helping someone who needs to move. I have a bunch of colleagues right now who are going to be working on building a house for someone. So there are lots of different ways to get involved, and it might feel like effort at first, maybe it’s more of a draining activity to get started, but it can very well be an energizing activity, and then allow yourself room for restful activities with other people. One of the things that Trisha started with was naps, collective napping. So there are lots of different ways. It doesn’t always have to look like a big activity. Wonder, wonder together. Go for a walk and wonder together. There’s lots of ways that resistance can be joyful, can be rejuvenating, can be connective. It’s not all just fighting what is. It is building into, fueling into, dreaming into what could be, what we want to be, how we want to be.

Valerie Friedlander 35:16
I’ve said this so many times that the ends create the means, and one of the things I didn’t realize, and I think I may have mentioned this in a recent episode, but didn’t realize that that was a Gandhi quote, and a lot of other people have said very similar things of like, this is what it looks like. What we do is what builds where we go. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate all of you, and I’d love to hear what are you building into, what are you trying out, what did this inspire for you, or is there something else you’d add that I missed? I always love to hear from you, so please don’t hesitate to reach out, and I will talk to you all next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai