1.1 If you take the world to heart, you will hurt...
How could you not?
This is a world of mass exploitation and mass suffering.
And we’re facing the very real possibility of the death of our species, with all the things we love about humans and being human gone forever.
But just because you’re hurting…
Does not mean you have to hurt yourself.
The more deeply you care about people, the more vulnerable you become, so…
The more deeply you need to take care of yourself.
If your activism runs deep, your self–care needs to run just as deep.
If you delve into the dark side of the human psyche to get at the source of human evil, you will need to call on every bit of self–nurturance you can muster.
I’ve read lots of advice for activists about self–care, most of it good stuff. But if you ask me, it’s not enough.
During the years I worked as a coach for nonprofit leaders, many of them told me…
I know all the right things to do. Eat nutritious food, get exercise every day, sleep a full eight hours every night, make time for family and friends.
But time, that’s the problem. I don’t have time to do all those things. And on too many days I don’t have time to do any of those things.
And then there’s stress. Too often when I go home at night, I’m so stressed out that I’m a drag on my family, and there’s no chance I’m going to get a really good night of sleep.
Those years of coaching convinced me that activists need to get radical about self-care.
A random collection of how–tos is not enough, even if each of those how-tos on its own is something smart and useful.
If you want to go for the deepest kind of self–care, what I recommend is that you…
Upgrade your operating system.
The one you use for your activism.
This site is about taking that leap.
The default OS in the nonprofit world is what I call the Sacrificial–Savior Operating System. It sounds like this…
I’m sacrificing myself to save you.
Or to save my community.
Or to save the world.
I spent years living under the spell of the SSOS. Here was my thinking…
I see lots and lots of activists working hard to make things better, really a lot. But not nearly enough. There’s so much more work to be done.
So I have to do more. I have to do the work of two or three or four. Even though I’m already maxxed out.
This sacrificial approach to activism diminished me and made me less effective instead of more effective.
And where did this mistake come from? It came from caring about people and the world. But my caring took a wrong turn.
And what did this wrong turn lead to? It led to me to believe I had to play savior. It was clear to me that this species of ours is not saving itself, so me and my fellow activists needed to do the work of salvation.
I’ve seen how badly so many activists have been hurt and are still being hurt by following the SSOS, but there’s an alternative.
The opposite of the SSOS, the cure for it, is what I call…
The Deep-Nurturance OS.
Which starts by putting the people first. Not the work, not the mission, but the people who do the work and carry out the mission.
And let me ask this question…
Who advocates for you?
You’re so busy and so good at advocating for others—people who have been knocked down by society and need help. And communities that need to defend themselves. And for our entire species which is in such danger.
But…
Who advocates for you?
Who gets behind the scenes with you and sees what it takes for you to do the work you do?
Who understands what it took for you to become the person you are who can do the work you do?
Who gives you this kind of company?
If you’ve got people like that in your life, hooray. But many activists don’t.
I believe you deserve to take the best possible care of yourself just because. Just because you’re the caring kind of person you are.
I believe you deserve to…
Feel for yourself and fight for yourself.
And do that every single day.
But…
There’s a mission reason, too.
What I know from watching activists step into the Deep-Nurturance OS is that…
The better you take care of yourself, the better your work will be.
And then there’s this. In response to the fact that there aren’t enough of us doing the work that needs to be done, the SSOS says…
Each activist has to do more.
But the DNOS says…
We need more people.
But when you hear the phrase “nonprofit activist,” what picture comes to mind? An earnest but dragged–down burnout?
That’s what way too many people see, and it’s not appealing.
During the years when I was a sacrificial leader, people patted me on the back and thanked me for my work and told me what a good guy I was…
But they did not want to live like me.
And that’s a problem.
I remember going to a Green Festival once to interview people about the question of hope. I got into a conversation with Taschi, a bright, personable, young woman who had just finished a graduate program in environmental science. She told me she was trying to figure out her career path.
So I asked her, “Have you ever thought about becoming a nonprofit ED?”
She shot back…
“Oh, no, I like myself too much.”
If we’re driving away people like Taschi, what hope is there?
We need a better way of doing activism than the traditional default, because…
We need activism to be attractive.
Massively attractive.
We’re up against massive challenges. Tens of thousands of activists, even millions of us, working as hard as we can, are not enough to save a global species of seven billion.
To have any chance at saving ourselves, we’d need for people to get involved by the tens of millions, then hundreds of millions, then maybe even billions. We’d need all hands on deck.
That’s what we need, but what have we got? Activism that scares off too many people…
Which is nothing less than a death knell for our species.
I believe there’s nothing more urgent for activists to do than to take care of ourselves deeply and well. We need to do that, first…
So we can sustain ourselves in the work we do which is so very challenging.
But there’s a second reason. When we talk about our missions, it’s usually in terms of services, like case management, job training, and help with housing. Or in terms of the issues we focus on, like health care, climate change, reproductive choice, racial justice, and voting rights.
But I believe our primary mission needs to be this…
Demonstrating with our own lives that activism can be a good way to live.
We can only make activism massively attractive if the way we do our work…
Makes people envy us.
When we mistreat ourselves and burn ourselves out, we’re delivering the message that caring is bad for you. And activism is bad for you.
But we know that activism done right can be…
The adventure of a lifetime.
Healthy caring, as opposed to sacrificial caring, is invigorating. It’s deeply satisfying.
Activism, at its best, means we’re doing meaningful work in the company of kindred spirits. And when people do very hard, very important work together they develop a deep sense of friendship. Friendship that might last the rest of their lives.
We need people to look at us in the midst of our work and say…
“I want to live like that. I want that aliveness. I want that depth of meaning. I want those friendships.”
Skeptical? Does this seem crazy impossible? I get it. It’s hard to believe we’re ever going to get even the simple majority of people in the world to engage in the kind of activism that would transform how we live as a global community.
And of course we can’t give people ten easy steps for doing deeply ambitious activism. It’s always going to require hard work. I would hope there’d be some seriously happy times along the way. But still, there will always be plenty of hard work.
And there are no guarantees about how far we can get with this ambition, but…
Why not go as far as we can?
Yet, whatever the final result of our work, if we follow the strategy of deep, proactive, heartfelt nurturance, that’s…
A good way to live in and of itself.
And it’s a two–fer. When we take the very best care of ourselves…
We get that second win of attracting others to activism for free.
