This kind of bliss pushes us to come alive — to do the things we were meant to do. And to do them boldly. It heightens the responsibility of your bliss — don’t bliss out in small ways. Do it big, and do it for others. Come alive.
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BALLE — The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies — gathered some of the most brilliant minds in the world, both urban and rural, who practice macro ideas at the micro level. While the scope and scale of everyone’s individual work runs the gamut, everyone at BALLE gatherings shares one thing in common: they root their impact in real-life, beyond the conceptual or academic.
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Friends, I’ve been tired. Very, very tired. On the edge of burnout-tired. The work is good. I love the work. But this was a kind of tired that was settling deep in my bones, not solvable by a good night of sleep or even a week off. I had stopped hearing my own song — my own knowing and inner compass, so over-stimulated with new input and responsibility. Have you felt that feeling before? When we do, we need a dedicated pause to find it again.
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On one day, Otto Scharmer may be just the right thing to nudge people ahead. On another, we may pull out some Art of Hosting rules to make sure everyone’s listening openly, or we may map out a series of Agile-inspired sprints to get everyone’s sleeves rolled-up. None of the theories above are big enough to hold what we do. We use pieces of them all and are attached to none. Isn’t it freeing?
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In a new environment or in changing conditions, we are mercilessly removed from what feels familiar and safe. We can no longer navigate. When our perspective changes—especially if that shift is unexpected, unfamiliar, or out of our control—we resist. So let’s say you’re right up at a windshield. You can’t see where you’re going. Things are unfolding in a way that feels disorienting, and even upsetting. Remember these two things…
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Have you ever had a year like this? When an unprecedented professional leap (movement, idea, project) emerges, it comes with a pretty substantial to-do list of personal growth, and you’re left spinning. You know you need to leap your self ahead in-step with your career—and fast. I knew what was to come, and had a sense that I’d have to change to accommodate this big shift.
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One thing we’re all well-served to remember: no matter where you came from or how you came up, our ancestry is complicated. And we are all still feeling the reverberations of it. Tim’s episode was last week, and mine is next week. When you listen, try to hold the complexity of both realities without dismissing either.
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In 2019, how might you reassess your effect? What edges need softening? What needs sharpening? When it feels shaky this year, try continuing to say YES. Stay the course. A big idea, ambition, or change isn’t supposed to be smooth, graceful, or easy. All of it requires rootlessness. Humility. Fluidity. And a heck of a shake.
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Here’s more on why depth is such a primary actor on the stage of change, whether we’re embracing it or hiding from it: good change requires good vulnerability. If we embrace it, we all step forward. If we hide, our capacity dulls.
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In Art of Hosting, there's no such thing as a hands-off host. If we are among any AoH cohort, we're constantly practicing how to host actively—to surface more voices that are often surprising, otherwise marginalized, and deeply valuable. In this excerpt of Tuesday Ryan-Hart's talk, we explore beyond the intention of equity to the practical implementation of it.
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In this second episode of INSIDE THE OUTSIDE, Tim and Tuesday reflect on how they create the conditions for optimal trust inside a room full of collaborators—so people sharing in the work of systems change can trust in each other, in the process, and in the path to action.
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Think of how kids play, learn, and integrate new information. As we explore and push the boundaries of what's familiar, we endure (and perpetrate!) countless bumps, scrapes, and meltdowns. This is the formative glue of long-term learning. Without challenging days, we’d lack the context to capitalize on our best days. And without a playful spirit, the most serious blocks might break our best efforts apart.
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The BALLE fellowship is a cohort of rural-minded creative leaders who collaborate to act local, prioritize equity, regenerate nature, shift capital, co-create policy, and cultivate connection. Together with participants, the facilitation team rolls up our sleeves and shares our work once more.
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The day we joined forces to launch The Outside, equity was foremost in our minds. Not only as a 'nice-to-do' for morality, but as a 'need-to-do' for the effectiveness of our communities, organizations, and movements. In this vlog, we talk about why equity-by-design is such an integral part to the systems change work we do.
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Treated with care, the heat of friction can cure how we live together—not a ‘cure’ as the word refers to the eradication of disease, but the kind of curing that makes things solid, resilient, and fully-formed. Preservation, flavouring, osmosis. The kind of cure that requires patience.
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How do we not mistake a bigger cage for freedom or transformation? How do we know it’s time for transformation? And how do we allow ourselves to liquify enough to do it? How do we hold multiple truths and still move forward together? You sought the future: How do we focus on what we have not yet even imagined?
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Sometimes, we forget—especially when we’re new to our audience—that we’re not just talking about equity and systems change. We are demonstrating it, whether we intend to or not. In the following conversation, Tim and I examine how we come across as representatives of what could be—should be—a better way of working towards a better world.
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Tim and I often talk about holding both soulful and strategic elements in our work. Powerful revelations have to lead somewhere. Recently, the excellent ON BEING podcast featured an interview with poet David Whyte, and hit on something I see in our work—a need for vulnerability, poetic language, and the balance of left-brain, right-brain that moves us into new action.
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We've been doing this for years—both together and as individuals—and it never ceases to be a shock and a delight when hands go up in a room that was once completely blocked and closed-off to the idea of doing things—and thinking about things—differently. This is the breakthrough that begins genuine, meaningful, much-needed progress. Here's how we try and set the stage to get hands in the air.
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This is why we do the work we do—new leadership methods and tools, shifted mindsets, and a practice of equity animates a room. Even the rooms that might have once felt irrevocably blocked with a legacy of competing mandates or repeated patterns. When we contemplate fresh perspectives, bringing more voices 'in from the outside', it dawns on us that perhaps there's a way forward after all. These are the moments we live for.
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