Reality vs The World We Can Build Instead

In starting my business, I stepped out of the mainstream so that I could genuinely support folks in the traditional institutions to change their lives and work in value-aligned ways, shedding the overing and burnout.

Reflecting on the third-year anniversary of my business being my full work focus, I see that a regenerative model promotes interconnected resilient work. That’s why I’m building a regenerative business that is community-oriented and with values of embodied connection and transformative growth.

Having spent decades as a sociologist and scholar of organizations, I’m well-versed in the impacts of neoliberalism, globalization, and late-stage capitalism. But the academy didn’t prepare me for this journey of rebuilding work regeneratively while unlearning disembodiment, disconnection, and so much more. In neither higher education nor in the broader coaching industry did I learn about growth that is cyclical rather than linear and upward only.

It was actually through my climate training and work that I learned of the concept of hospicing systems and paradigms - how we have to guide the old ways out as we are simultaneously building new ways. It’s a period of transition and a new way of thinking. It’s not about growth as linear and upward-oriented but rather cyclical and spiral-shaped. [One of the books in my nightstand pile is Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira.]

During my first few years of side hustling, I operated within the same old paradigm of burnout, overing culture. I realize now though that those were my transition years - my bridge from the old to the new. I had so much to unlearn and relearn in order to partner with the cycles of my body and nature.

I talk to clients about deinstitutionalizing ourselves and “unruling the rules” in our brains. I also know it can be challenging to see how to do that or where to do that when you’re still entrenched in the old systems.

The reality of our late-stage capitalist society right now is that the whole notion of “cost of living” is out of control and impacting all of us. We have all seen prices rise exponentially since 2020. I can’t think of an area where prices aren’t very noticeably higher. All the while, reports of extreme record profits for CEOs and stockholders at the cost of all of our wellbeing and survival. With my own business, I don’t want to feed into that.

As much of my 1:1 and community work has taught me, resistance against the toxic status quo of living and working is necessary to build together resilient ways of being and creating a new reality.

Coaching is one of the most powerful tools for creating that resistance through transformation. And community is an insulator to the chaos in the world as we build regenerative resilience to do the work we need to do moving forward.

When we join together in community we nurture a type of resilience that extends beyond each of us and forms resistance to the toxic overing that is rampant. I can’t ethically do the ecologically and socially beneficial work I do while others strain to cover the costs of living and also invest in their own impact work. That’s why I adjusted my prices and continue my efforts to make working together more accessible.

I want to build a world where relationships are reciprocal, investment is mutual, and we oscillate organically between inner work and our outer communal work.

What’s the world you want to build? What can we build together?

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about mentorship coaching, let’s hop on a call.