By Mala Nagarajan
Nearing four weeks after the 2016 election, and many of us are still angered, shocked, and disappointed. Some of us are still dealing with our reaction and emotions – immobilized like a deer in headlights, depressed like we’re free falling, angry like a boiling tea kettle. Some of us are analyzing what happened, engaging on the ground, and looking proactively to the future. Still, some of us are critiquing, judging, and name-calling.
How do we use this energy in a way that connects our mutual interests, leverages our combined efforts, and harnesses our collective power?
By Vega Subramaniam
Well. Here we are.
As a youth, I was clear that I was a citizen of the world. Political boundaries were irrelevant. I held that clarity while also acknowledging that I was an American and that this place was my “home.” As I’ve grown older, I’ve allowed the notion of America as my “home” to eclipse the notion that I am a citizen of the world. This election is a good reminder that I am a citizen of the world, which always eclipses America as my “home.”
There is alarm coursing through my veins, every time I step onto the Metro, walk down the street, enter a store. Now, more than ever, I need to be resilient. And I’m not even Muslim, not Black, not an undocumented immigrant, not trans.
By Vega Subramaniam
I just read Gretchen Rubin’s “4 Strategies to Change Your Habits that Actually Work” on Fast Company. And yes, the suggestions she offers would support your habit change — using a clean slate as an opportunity to break with a past habit; monitoring what you do; making a bad habit inconvenient (classic example: putting the alarm clock far away from your bed), and giving yourself treats just because.
But her conclusion gave me pause. She says, “Changing habits can be a challenge.” (So far, so good.) But then she says, “By doing the easy things first, we may find that change is less demanding than we expect.”
Hm. Maybe? Certainly, doing the easy things first will support you in breaking a habit. No argument there.
But I don’t think I’ve met anyone, myself included, who finds change “less demanding than we expect.” It’s all too often harder. It’s easy enough to *start* down the path to a new habit: going for a daily run, writing 15 minutes a day, eating a healthy breakfast every morning, opening and filing mail immediately, whatever your thing is.
But keeping at it: ugh. There will be so many reasons and ways to slip back. And if we hope that it won’t be as demanding as we expect, then we’ll feel like a failure at the first misstep.
But missteps are bound to happen. The point is less to believe that “change is less demanding than I expect” than to know that it is demanding, but I’m up to it.
So how does that happen? Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
In Part One of ‘How to Overcome Your Decision-Making Hurdles,’ we reflected on the stories we each have about our own decision-making glitches. We observed that for some of us, even thinking about good decision-making is “this-makes-me-feel-terrible-about-myself” hard. We noted that the first step toward moving into confident, values-based decision-making is to acknowledge your story.
In Part Two, we described the context for our stories: the messages we grew up with and are surrounded by. Our social systems relentlessly send us messages about what we should be doing, what is moral, what counts as ‘success,’ what we should prioritize. The static that those systems creates in our brains hinders our ability to make sound, values-based decisions.
So what’s the antidote?
Part Three: Shine a light on our own process
The antidote is to pay attention to your own best decision-making process.
Notice
Think of a decision you’ve made that you feel really good about.
A lot of people have a hard time coming up with an example. It can provoke anxiety to try to dredge up a good decision, especially because the reason you’re reading this is that you worry that you tend to be bad at it. And other people might have you focus on all the ways that you make bad decisions, what you didn’t do, what you did wrong. Truth is, we all sometimes make bad decisions, we all forget important steps, get results that are less than we hoped for.
But focusing on only those is a distraction, just negative self-talk blocking your path forward. There’s no time for that now! Move around that perspective, and take another look from another angle. You can think of at least one decision that you feel good about, or that was right at the time, even if you’ve changed since then.
Got one?
By Vega Subramaniam
In ‘How to Overcome Your Decision-Making Hurdles: Part One’, we reflected on the stories we each have about our own decision-making glitches. We observed that for some of us, even thinking about good decision-making is “this-is-making-me-feel-terrible-about-myself” hard. We noted that the first step toward moving into confident, values-based decision-making is to acknowledge your story. Which brings us to…
Part two: Understand where those stories came from
Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
Decision making is hard
Mala and I had the pleasure of spending a couple hours recently with some Intentional Life Planning participants during our follow-up session on decision-making.
We came to talk about what helps us make good decisions and dissect our bottlenecks. Ultimately, we hoped that each participant would identify their own process for intentional, values-based decision-making leading to choices they could be confident about. We asked participants to think about successful decisions they’ve made…and we discovered that even thinking about good decision-making is hard. Not the “should I eat in or go out for dinner tonight?” hard but the agonizing, I-feel-terrible-about-myself hard. And frankly, even the dinner question gets wrapped up in questions about our worth as human beings.
How can you possibly shine a light on your process when even thinking about it makes you feel terrible about yourself?
We think there’s a way forward. And we think there are three parts.
By Vega Subramaniam
Last week’s New York Times article The Summer That Never Was got me to wondering how common author Tim Kreider’s experience is: his sense of foreboding and gloom, lost opportunities and lost time as autumn approaches. Pretty common, I’m guessing, based on a straw poll of my friends, and the fact that I felt that way once.
I don’t anymore, though.
To be sure, autumn has melancholy built into it. But there’s melancholy, and then there’s despair.
So that got me to wondering how invested people are in holding onto those bleak feelings. What if it were different? What if you were able to consistently meet the new season with contentment rather than despair? Read More
By Mala Nagarajan
As a nonprofit leader in need of staff, you may be tempted to hire a contractor (aka consultant) to fill a vacancy. Maybe you think it’ll be easier to get rid of the person if it doesn’t work out. Or perhaps you don’t have secure funding, and you don’t have the heart to let a person go. Temporary positions are a great way to let the candidate check the organization out and to let you check out the candidate. And the 1099s your accountant completes for your payments to an independent contractor are a lot less burden than the administration and cost of new employee hires (e.g., I-9, healthcare and retirement paperwork, unemployment taxes, worker’s compensation fund contributions, FICA taxes, paid breaks or medical leave).
But wait! Don’t do it.
By Vega Subramaniam
The onset of autumn always fills me with a sense of anticipation. I have a visceral response to the changes in the air that come with the start of the academic year. I was one of the lucky ones who experienced the thrill of shiny new school supplies, blank notebooks, new pencils and pencil cases. As a professor, I thrived on the energy and boisterousness of students returning to schools and campuses. And I always hoped that this year, I’d get it right, I’d excel, I’d rise to the challenge and meet my potential.
Even though I haven’t been a student — or a professor or university employee — for years, that spirit has never left me. The autumn air still signals potential, possibility, achievement. And it’s not just me. Read More
By Mala Nagarajan
When Vega or I tell people that we’ve held our own personal strategic planning retreat every year for the past 12 years, we’re apt to get curious, astonished looks. And as often as not, we’re asked what our secret is and how to get started.
In 2003, our lives were out of control. Besides working full-time, our days were filled with endless commitments to community work, to our friends, to organizing Trikone-Northwest – a queer South Asian space, and more. While we could have said ‘no,’ we often felt like everything was a ‘must-do.’ The consequence? We were not saying ‘yes’ to us.
