Build Resilience One Restful Moment at a Time
Your journey to building belonging in your life and at work begins with taking the time to rest and nurture your soul with moments of unapologetic joy.
TL;DR
7 Life & Work Updates
Book recommendations
Shadow work
My Olympics 🏅🌄
A GIFT for you
Career goal (once deferred)
Commitment to unapologetic trans joy 🏳️⚧️🎉
A community offering
After a long-overdue vacation, I'm reflecting on this powerful quote from Tricia Hersey's book, Rest is Resistance:
You were not born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect.
Last month provided an opportunity to apply Tricia's wisdom, to make more space for healing, and to rest and restore.
I'm returning with new commitments, ideas, dreams, and visions, and I'm so excited to share these fresh inspirations and where I am now with you.
Since shifting how I lead my consulting and coaching business, I'm pleased to report I have gained something I wanted back in my life: time.
Having the space to show up more alive and present has infused something that once felt elusive to me: a real sense of joy.
Here's a glimpse of how joy has returned to me...
1. I've savored many summer reads...
I love reading. As an author, reading is my inhalation for inspiration, and writing is the exhalation of how I make meaning from the content.
My summer reading has opened my eyes to the depth and breadth of how other author-experts imagine and build belonging in their lives and work.
To support your ongoing exploration of how to build belonging in your life and at work, I wanted to share a few of my favorite reads that can help:
Belonging without Othering, by john a. powell & Stephen Menedian, offers hope for an uncertain future.
Invisible Doctrine, by George Monbiot & Peter Hutchinson, describes a new economic system rooted in the politics of belonging.
Love After the End, an anthology of two-spirit and indigiqueer writers, imagining queer futurisms so many of us long to enjoy.
2. I invested time doing "shadow work."
In June, I traveled to LA for a Rest & Refresh retreat with one of my friends & mentors, Justin Michael Williams, where we did shadow work.
If you're unfamiliar with the term "shadow," it's everything in your life that is outside your field of awareness but is making your choices for you.
For those of you who have taken my Imagine Belonging Course, the shadow is akin to the self-sabotaging behaviors obscuring your life and career visions.
We all have shadows, and as Justin often says, the brighter the light, the bigger the shadow. I examined mine by answering this simple yet challenging question:
What part of you is making your choices?
This was powerful work and has allowed me to make conscious choices aligned with my life vision from a more embodied and grounded place.
3. My Olympics!🏅🌄
In July, I traveled to the Olympic National Park where I spent 5 days hiking and mountaineering my way to the top of Mt. Olympus with a dear friend.
Mountaineering adventures remind me of the sacred duty we DEI practitioners play for those we lead. We build safety and trust as we guide people toward their goals.
Yet, at the end of the day, the real work of DEI requires personal commitment and work. We can't carry another person, a team, or an organization on our backs.
It's for this reason that I display Lester Tsai's beautiful photo of Wy'East/Mt. Hood on my office wall. If you've attended a virtual session with me, you know it well.
4. I'm speaking at the Thrive Beyond Work Summit.
Tomorrow, I'm speaking at the Thrive Beyond Work Summit, a community-building event created to reduce burnout and build resilience.
Host Dawn Cortese and I will chat about why we want to move beyond culture change and discuss what it takes to transform the culture of work as we know it.
I'm thrilled to give a complimentary ticket to you. Simply register here and enjoy many other complimentary gifts during this enormous learning journey!
5. I'm pursuing a career goal (once deferred).
Battling burnout challenged my health and well-being last year. To heal, I sacrificed a big career goal; pursuing a somatics coaching certification.
...fast forward to this past week...where I'm proud to share big news! I learned I was officially accepted to the Strozzi Institute's Somatics Coaching Program. I'm elated!!
The somatics practices I continue to learn and refine will absolutely complement the executive coaching programs I and my team deliver to individuals and teams.
6. I'm a commitment to unapologetic trans joy. 🏳️⚧️🎉
Before being accepted into the somatics coaching program, I had to complete the Strozzi Institute's Embodied Transformation Course.
I went into the 4-day program with the expectation that I would be working on ways to improve my executive coaching skills and scale my business.
Life had different plans for me. I instead continued exploring my shadow, and my conditioned tendencies, which helped clarify my declaration for the year ahead:
I am a commitment to unapologetic trans joy. 🏳️⚧️🎉
While I'm open about being a trans man, I made this renewed commitment to bring deeper connections with those around me, without self-censorship or apology.
I'm excited to share how this commitment will unfold over the next few months as we enter the height of the Presidential campaign season.
7. I have a new Politics of Belonging offer.
And finally, the pièce de résistance of this update: the Presidential campaign season has DEI on its mind.
You and I know this all too well. The heightened scrutiny of our work impacts our careers, our businesses, and our overall sense of purpose.
It's for this reason that I'm launching a weekly Politics of Belonging Practice, kicking off at the September 19th Belonging Circle and running through election day.
The purpose of these weekly gatherings is to build our resilience and stamina as we strengthen our belonging community and the movement we are growing.
If you'd like to experience this kind of connection before September 19, consider joining the Belonging Membership Community!
And that's it, for now. Big changes are in the air, and what I've shared with you are some of my biggest ones.
Now, I'd love to know: What about you? What's new?! What are you committed to?
If you feel moved, please drop me a note HERE and let me know what's going on in your world. I'd love to connect with you, too.
Together, let's grow our #BelongingMovement!