 **I recently had the chance to spend a week at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It was a beautiful experience filled with challenge, learning, and expansion. This is one Thing that Happened.**
I start to freak out the moment that the door of the sweat lodge closes. The lodge itself is a small, wooden structure covered in blankets. There’s a depression in the center to hold heated rocks. At the moment, it’s filled with fifteen or so stones of various sizes that have been sitting next to a large fire for a couple of hours. Even with the door open, it has gotten hot. Door, by the way, is overstating the case a bit. It’s actually a flap of blankets and a weighted tarp. With the door open, the lodge is dim and warm. Comfortable even. When the flaps come down, darkness descends. The space becomes stuffy and oppressive. I’ve never thought of myself as claustrophobic. I’ve explored caves, crawled through underground tunnels, and snorkeled through tight caverns filled with rushing water with only slight anxiety. But there’s something about this that feels different.
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 The problems of poverty, disease, and environmental decay cannot be solved merely by the use of more and more scientific technology. Technological fixes usually turn out to be a jumble of procedures that have unpredictable consequences and are often in conflict with natural forces. Indeed, technological magic is not much better than primitive magic in dealing with the fundamental issues of human existence, and in addition, it is much more destructive.
–Rene Dubos, 1967 At a recent conference billed as an exploration of the intersection of Social Impact and Exponential Technologies, a prominent tech luminary spoke on the increasing incidence of depression and how technology will be essential to dealing with it. She walked us through data showing that depression is projected to increase several-fold in the next decade. Other data laid out the developed world’s current capacity to treat depression. There was a clear and growing gap. We simply will not have the resources to handle the epidemic. We must, the speaker said, find a way to increase our capacity to serve those grappling with depression. It’s not possible to train enough therapists in time to offer support. Fortunately, exponential technology, specifically adaptive intelligence, can help. Currently, those working with depression have limited options for getting support. Almost all of them involve having to find and vet a therapist, go to therapy consistently, and/or get a prescription medication. With adaptive intelligence, help could be as close as an app on your phone. The speaker walked us through a use case. Someone feels unmotivated, disconnected, and depressed. They log on to a secure (much emphasis was placed on ‘secure’) app and are greeted by an adaptive Artificial Intelligence that approximates warmth and curiosity. With a few questions customized to inspire reflection and sharing, the AI triages users. Some people may only need a bit of space for reflection. For them, the AI provides the necessary level of support. Others may require more intensive support. The AI detects this and links them to a trained therapist for a consultation. This technology driven solution solves for the problem of capacity. Exponential technology saves the day. I listened to the talk with a growing sense of dread and frustration in my gut. Transformational Storytelling: Building Inclusive Cultures That Promote Purpose and Belonging7/2/2018  The world, and people’s awareness of themselves in it, is changing at a rapid clip, yet many organizations still adhere to an outdated model of culture based on traditional economic logic. This logic assumes that employees act purely out of self interest and incentivises performance based largely on salary and bonuses.
More and more, this no longer works. Especially with younger team members. The mismatch between employee values and organizational culture results in disengagement. Employees may get stuck in a rut, show decreased motivation, develop tense relationships, and stop performing at their potential. Conventional responses such as, on the one hand, team building retreats, happy hours, and perks become less effective. As do, on the other hand, tighter oversight and control. So What Do We Do? By connecting people with a higher sense of purpose, a feeling of belonging, and cultivating strong interpersonal connection, organizations can inspire their people to bring greater energy, creativity, and dedication to their work. The type of ‘higher purpose’ necessary is separate from economic exchanges or financial bottom lines. Rather, it is aspirational, helping each person working within the organization see how their work contributes to a broader goal, mission, or movement.  According to Psychology Today, Americans just broke a new record for anxiety and stress. If you’re into breaking records, that’s very exciting. For the rest of us, it may just be a confirmation that we’re not alone in dealing with that near constant tightness in the chest and knot in the stomach.
When the world goes topsy turvy and a swirling atmosphere of division, outrage and chaos becomes more pervasive, it deepens our stress and can affect us at at every level of our lives. It can disturb our sleep, eating habits, and behaviors. We can start to define ourselves by our relationship to unfolding events. We’re protesters! We’re victims of a rigged system! We’re builders of a new, more just society! It’s exhausting, numbing, and overwhelming. And, frankly, it’s dehumanizing. While it’s true that adopting a daily meditation or yoga practice and exercising several times a week and watching your diet and drinking 10 glasses of water per day and cutting down on coffee and starting a garden will all help reduce stress. . .sometimes there’s just not space in the day for all of that. Here are five efficient tools I’ve found useful in destressing, remembering who I am beyond the news of the day, opening up a bit of space, and even reclaiming my humanity. They don’t take much time and can be done pretty much anywhere. Hope you find them useful:  Over the past few years, Storytelling has emerged as a critical communication skill. Stories help us establish emotional connections with our audience, community, customers, and contributors. These connections can build over time and create brand loyalty that goes beyond purely ‘business’ transactions.
Story, however, is much more than a tool for communication. It also is one of the most effective, efficient, and powerful tools we have to build effective teams. Here are four ways that incorporating storytelling as a core practice can deepen engagement and increase effectiveness in teams:  There’s a crippling misconception floating out there in the world that tells us that the only good stories are based on Big, Dramatic Events. A major humanitarian crisis. Or a story of individual tragedy that, through heroic action, becomes a tale of almost superhuman triumph. While it’s true that those stories have power, sometimes the stories that resonate most strongly occur in small moments of reflection or realization.
What makes an event or moment story-worthy? Humans have an uncanny ability to domesticate everything they touch. Eventually, even the strangest things become absorbed into the routine of the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance, anxiety, and contentment. Only seldom does the haze lift, and we glimpse for a second the amazing plenitude of being here. –John O’Donohue
A few years ago, I found that my life had become curiously flat. I had everything I needed to survive–food, shelter, creature comforts–and moved through my days in a haze. Each day looked more or less the same. Get up. Breakfast. Work. Sit at a desk. Eat snacks. Go home. Sleep. Sometimes I spent time with friends. Not a bad life. A domesticated life. A luxurious life, in fact. But the familiarity of the day to day routine, repeated endlessly, dulled my senses. Food became bland and I took to eating absurdly spicy dishes just to break through the haze. I’d find myself blinking at the end of each week wondering where so many hours had gone, unable to remember much of what had happened over the preceding days. I became a ghost drifting through the faint contours of my own life. There’s a bit of a mystique around breathwork meditation that is not entirely necessary. The intention of this post is to share a bit of what you can expect during a breathwork session.
For folks who have practiced breathwork a few times, this might help create some context for your experience. For those who haven’t, it may answer some questions. Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Here we go. Breathwork works on four levels: Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Every time we do the practice, it’s working on these levels in different degrees.  Client: Nonprofit Finance Fund Advisory Services Founded in 1980, Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) unlocks the potential of mission-driven organizations through tailored investments, strategic advice and accessible insights. NFF functions both as a CDFI Lender and a provider of advisory and consulting services and helps organizations connect money to mission effectively, supporting innovations such as growth capital campaigns, cross-sector economic recovery initiatives and impact investing. At a broad level, NFF works towards a world where capital and expertise come together to create a more just and vibrant society.
 A few months ago I attended a lovely event that honored a few local nonprofit organizations. The audience was fairly diverse. There were more than a few well-heeled folks in attendance.
In other words: the event presented a fantastic opportunity for these organizations to get in front of potential contributors and expand their community of support or at the very least raise their visibility. All three organizations, two of which have decent sized budgets, whiffed. And all three representatives followed the same outline. It went a bit like this:
I could feel the room going cold as each person spoke. There was no sense of connection or humanity. Just a bunch of words, ideas, and generalities. And no one included a call to action. As each presenter spoke, I found myself getting unreasonably frustrated. These were great organizations doing important work and they were coming across as boring and inconsequential. There is NO REASON that every single person speaking on behalf of a nonprofit shouldn’t be able to deliver a 3 to 5 minute talk that connects with an audience, communicates not just what the organization does, but also why it’s important, and calls the audience to action, even if it’s just to visit their website. Here’s a proven structure anyone can use that’s been used for hundreds of years to rally people to action: |
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