A few years back, I took a course on organization with one of my favorite business coaches, George Kao.

Until then, I had a constant sense of living for tomorrow, always hoping I’d have time to enjoy my life once I finished the current project. But seeing George’s schedule inspired me and, in retrospect, changed my life.

After seeing George’s calendar, I changed my calendar from a default monthly view to a weekly view, scheduled time for breaks, a weekly review practice, responding to emails, bigger projects and goals, exercise, and friends, and color-coded each type of activity.

I quickly discovered—as have many of my clients have since then—that this practice, which I came to call conscious calendaring—helped me develop a better sense of how much time I needed to get tasks done, set more realistic goals, pause throughout my days, close the computer at the end of the day, and accomplish my goals.

And, I found that whereas productivity culture trains us to believe that we should do more than is humanly possible and that we should hack our way into superhumanly manufacturing more time, my conscious calendaring practice helps me get a human-sized amount of the most important stuff done.

I’ve included a snapshot of a week of my calendar in the show notes. To some people, it might appear rigid or extreme to account for every moment from waking until bedtime. But I can choose to veer away from my plans if I discern that changing course better meets my needs, and I often do. And as opposed to feeling constricted, my calendar helps me experience far more ease and spaciousness than I did before.

Today, I’ll share seven conscious calendaring practices that can help you integrate more pause and presence into your life and align your life with what matters most to you.

But first, let’s talk about which calendar tool to use.

Now, I’m not making any money off of this recommendation, and I’m loathe to be a salesperson for Google. And yet, if you’re not already using a digital calendar, I strongly recommend Google calendars. Bear in mind that my recommendation to shift from a paper calendar to an online system often elicits strong resistance in people who feel wedded to a paper system, so if you feel averse to using an online system, here’s what I’d say:

If your paper system has supported you to be in right relationship with time, do what works. That said, over many years of supporting many clients to shift to an online system, I’ve discovered that nearly all of my clients find that, after some initial practice and persistence, a digital calendar helps them develop a much more choiceful and easeful relationship with time.

That’s because, as opposed to a paper schedule, an online calendar allows us to easily move blocks of time around, create repeating events, shift calendar views between monthly, weekly, and other timeframes, and make other changes to reflect our current needs. Writing on paper just isn’t so iterable. And, in case you’re new to Google calendars, I’ve included a link to a great Google Calendars tutorial in the show notes. If you are completely opposed to using an online system, you might also check out Franklin Covey planners, which I’ve seen some clients have success with.

Also, I encourage you to use only one calendar to hold all your commitments. As you may have experienced, storing commitments in multiple calendars can create a feeling of frazzledness and lead to dropped balls.

Once you decide which calendar tool you’ll use, do the following:

Set the default view to weekly, which I find works best for seeing time constraints and the regular rhythms of life.

Create repeating blocks of time to reflect your repeating daily, weekly, and monthly commitments such as workplace meetings, childcare, or exercise. These repeating events will become your default calendar, so that you don’t have to recreate your calendar from scratch each week.

My clients are often burned out high-achievers who come to me because they realize that they’ve been doing too much for too many people, taking responsibility for more than what is theirs to handle, and struggling to say no or make clear requests of others to step up. They long for a sense of balance so that they can continue making a contribution without sacrificing themselves.

Sound familiar?

If so, I’m excited to share with you the concept of centered responsibility.

To get a sense of what I mean by centered responsibility, I invite you to experiment for a moment:

First, as much as is possible for your body, sit upright, aligning your bottom, belly, heart, and head with each other. Then, lean your body forward, imagining that the leaning forward stance says, “This is mine to handle.”

Then, lean backward. Imagine that the leaning back stance says, “This is not mine to handle.”

Finally, look for the place between leaning back and leaning forward, where your bottom, belly, heart, and head align as much as possible. This is the shape of centered responsibility. Centered responsibility is the ability to discern what is and is not ours to handle and respond accordingly even in really challenging and uncomfortable moments of challenge.

Over-responsibility is the state of habitually leaning forward and taking responsibility for more than what is ours to handle. Notice if you can see yourself in any of the following examples of over-responsibility:

Stepping in to save the day when others are capable of handling things adequately

Taking charge in areas in which you’re highly competent rather than giving others space to learn

Doing all the work in the group project

Blaming yourself when a team project doesn’t go as you hoped, despite the fact that you showed up fully and others did not

Saying yes when you really want to say no in order to avoid disappointing others

Saying yes to more than what realistically fits in your schedule

Stepping in for your boss who lacks leadership skills

Speaking up on behalf of another person in an effort to avoid conflict

Parenting your parents

Blaming yourself for anything that is another person’s responsibility

Under-responsibility is the state of habitually leaning back and not taking responsibility for that which is ours to handle, for example:

Blaming time itself for the fact that you wish you had more of it rather than doing the painful work of choosing priorities and saying no to what you just don’t have time for

Ignoring your feelings

Ignoring your needs

Not making clear requests for what you need and want

Lashing out at loved ones rather than learning to communicate your needs more effectively

Stockpiling grievances or growing resentful of others

Gossiping or complaining about other people rather than addressing your conflicts with them directly

Draining your energy by trying to do it all rather than creating systems and fostering relationships that support you

Burnout often arises when we are over-responsible in some areas—like taking on more than our fair share of work—and under-responsible in other areas like not setting limits or communicating our needs.

Now, sometimes in life, we have to take on more responsibility than is ideal for us. Sometimes, we have to sacrifice our own needs to tend to a sick loved one, aging parent, small child, or community campaign. And often, it’s just plain painful that we don’t have time for all the things we long to do. Time management is grief work. There will always be more that we want to do than time to do it, and that can hurt.

And, at the same time, the more we practice centering, the more our habitual default state can become centered. And the more our default state is centered, the more gracefully we can dance between leaning forward and leaning back—between taking responsibility and creating space for others to do so as well.

I invite you to think of a habit you’d like to transform—either an old one you’d like to let go of or a new one you’d like to cultivate. A habit is any behavior we engage in semi-unconsciously, one that feels like it arises almost automatically or effortlessly within us.

For example, you might want to stretch your body after you wake up in the morning, breathe deeply when your child says something that activates you rather than screaming, close the computer at 5pm, or turn off the lights at an hour that supports you to wake up and stretch in the morning.

Over the years, many of my clients have wanted to develop a writing habit. They schedule time to write, sit down to do it, but sooner or later, they feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the task and get pulled into distraction. They go down an internet rabbit hole, get lost in social media, or succumb to an urge to do something more straightforward like the laundry.

Whatever it is, most of us have something that we want to do but then repeatedly feel pulled to do anything else instead. For me, it’s exercise, as I find just about anything else more interesting.

Now, a question for you—

What do you think you need to do in order to change your habits?

Many people answer this question with the word discipline, which originally meant punishment for the sake of correction.

But, as you may have experienced, discipline doesn’t always work that well for changing habits, and a self-punishing approach can perpetuate other unhelpful habits like self-judgment and self-harm.

Today, I want to share with you a far more kind and effective approach:

Self-observation.

In the last episode, I shared how our habitual behaviors arise when our nervous systems detect a cue in our environments that prompts an activation cascade—a sequence of sensations, emotions, thoughts, and ultimately, behaviors. And, I explained how, when we pause, we interrupt the activation cascade and create an opportunity to choose a different response.

Unfortunately, we’re often unaware that we’re experiencing an activation cascade in the first place. And, without awareness, it’s almost impossible to pause and choose a different response..

Fortunately, when we practice paying attention to what happens when we’re activated, it becomes far easier to notice when we’re activated, pause, and choose a different response. That’s where self-observation comes in.

In The Power of Habit, Nathan Azrin, one of the developers of habit reversal training, states:

“It seems ridiculously simple, but once you’re aware of how your habit works, once you recognize the cues and rewards, you’re halfway to changing it.

It seems like it should be more complex. The truth is, the brain can be reprogrammed. You just have to be deliberate about it.”[1]

In other words, the more awareness, the more choice. The more awareness of our behaviors we cultivate, the easier it becomes to choose behaviors that serve us and the people we care about.

In my Presence-Based Coaching training years ago, I learned a self-observation practice that I’ve come to rely on to help my clients (and myself) choose new behaviors and cultivate new habits. Here’s the practice:

Choose a behavior that you’d like to change and are willing to spend a few minutes investigating each day. Then, dedicate a few minutes each day to reflecting on instances during that day when you engaged or didn’t engage in the behavior.

If it is a behavior you want to let go of, ask yourself these specific questions, which track each part of the activation cascade:

Did I feel a pull to engage in the behavior? If so, when?

What sensations and emotions did I feel in my body?

What thoughts did I think?

What did I do?

What happened as a result?

If you’re tracking a behavior you want to do more of, ask yourself: When did I have an opportunity to engage in this behavior today? And, what did I do then?

If you engaged in the behavior,

We’ll start today with a quote from Tara Brach and her book, Radical Acceptance.

Brach writes:

It is believed that in the midst of a bullfight, a bull can find his own area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia.

As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when the bull finds querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear.

From the matador’s perspective, at this point, the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.[1]

In today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about how to stop reacting in ways that don’t serve us and find our own querencia through a practice of micro-pauses.

Now, granted, when it feels like every minute counts and we have no time to spare, it can be really hard to stop and find our power. Dominant culture insists that we produce constantly and our schedules overflow with obligations to community, work, children, parents, friends, and everyone else, so it’s hard not to feel like a bull in a ring with life coming at us sometimes. The notion of integrating pauses into our days might sound like something only New Age self-help gurus have time for.

But when we don’t pause to assess what’s really needed, our habitual reactions can bring us down paths we later regret.

To step outside of overwhelm, discern what we really need, and consciously respond in ways that serve us and the people we care about, we must pause.

The pause is the moment of choice.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes:

Between the stimulus and the response is a space, and in that space lies our power and our freedom.[2]

The pause is the space between the stimulus and our response. The pause is the place where we choose our next step.

Now, I’m not talking about going on a retreat or meditating for hours. I’m talking about the briefest of pauses. Even a few seconds can make a huge difference.

One reason why pausing can be so powerful is that when we pause, we interrupt our activation cascades. Activation cascades are sequences of physiological reactions—sensations, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors—which unfold as if on autopilot in response to cues that our nervous systems detect as threats or opportunities to meet our needs.

For example, let’s say that you receive an email from a colleague sending critical feedback.

Here’s what your activation cascade might look like in reaction to the email:

You detect the cue, often below your conscious awareness. In this case, the cue is the email.

You feel sensations in your body. When you read the email, you might feel tension, constriction, clenching, heat, restlessness, agitation, irritation, or other uncomfortable sensations.

You might also feel an urge to reply immediately or slam your computer closed or text a friend. Habits often feel like urges to dissipate built-up energy, like feeling compelled to do something or having an itch that wants scratching.

You feel emotions. Perhaps reading the email brings up emotions like anxiety, nervousness, overwhelm, frustration, confusion, dismay, embarrassment, or guilt.

You think thoughts. Maybe you think: “Everyone judges me.” “What if something terrible happens?” “My colleague is such a jerk.” “I can’t believe I did that.” “What do I do now?”

You react with a habitual behavior. Maybe you fight—you send a litany of complaints back to your colleague without first thinking through a more strategic response. Maybe you flee—you ignore the email and pretend like you never received it. Maybe you freeze—you feel like a deer in headlights or like the wheels in your head stop turning. Or perhaps you fawn and immediately apologize to your colleague without first reflecting on how much of their critique is actually your responsibility.

When we’re unaware that we’re experiencing an activation cascade, we’re likely to react with habitual behaviors that do...

Nearly ten years ago, I trained as a clinical hypnotherapist.

I wanted to help my clients break free from long-standing, limiting patterns like workaholism and people-pleasing and to help them access the freedom to honor their inner wisdom.

In our first weekend workshop, my teacher gave us an instruction that surprised me in its simplicity and that, in retrospect, shaped me into a far more confident person.

He told us—From now on, when someone gives you a compliment, say thank you.

That’s it. Don’t diminish the compliment, tell them about all the mistakes you’ve made, or project your attention back on the other person.

Just say thank you.

Since then, I’ve shared my teacher’s wisdom with my own clients. And I’ve come to think of it as one of my favorite tools in my arsenal of shoy.

That’s right—shoy.

Shared Joy & Bragging Gratitude

Coined by clinical psychologist Catherine Chambliss and her team, shoy is short for shared joy. It is the practice of showing interest when someone else relates a success story with your body language, voice, and follow-up questions.

My other new favorite word is bragitude—the practice of expressing gratitude when someone else’s support or success contributes to our own. It’s telling another person about our win and then thanking them for how they helped.

The research around the importance of sharing celebration and appreciation is clear:

Relationship researcher John Gottman found that the most significant factor predicting a married couple’s likelihood of divorce was the ratio of positive to negative comments the partners made to each other. He found that the optimal ratio was five positive comments for every negative one.

Similarly, researchers found that the highest-performing leadership teams at a company gave 5.6 positive comments for each negative one, and the lowest-performing teams gave 0.36 positive comments to each negative one.[1]

And yet, the cultural norm in so many of our organizations is to dive right into the work and neglect taking time to connect, give thanks, and celebrate. But when we treat celebration and gratitude as if they were wastes of time, we drain our energy and limit our capacity.

Here are five ideas for integrating more shoy and bragitude in your life:

Begin meetings or family dinners with everyone sharing one thing that’s bringing them joy or with the question What’s new and good?

End meetings with everyone sharing one thing they are taking away or are grateful for from the meeting.

When someone does something that you appreciate, thank them and be as specific as possible about why you’re grateful.

When others compliment you, catch yourself if you start batting away their kind words, and simply, say thank you.

Track how many positive comments you give in comparison to negative ones. And experiment with intentionally increasing the positive one. Of course, be mindful not to stockpile grievances. This isn’t an invitation to avoid giving challenging feedback but rather an invite to seize the opportunity to give thanks and praise.

As Brené Brown wrote in Atlas of the Heart, "In the midst of joy, there's often a quiver, a shudder of vulnerability. Rather than using that as a warning sign to practice imagining the worst-case scenario, the people who lean into joy use the quiver as a reminder to practice gratitude…

In our research, we found that everyone who showed a deep capacity for joy had one thing in common: They practiced gratitude.”

Over the years, I’ve come to rely on my practice of shared joy to help my clients—and myself—cultivate confidence, expand joy, and step fully into what we’re called to do next.

I invite you to choose one of the practices above and notice the difference it makes for you.

***

If you’re longing to build your confidence as a leader and to be supported by a group of like-minded peers who are excited to celebrate your successes with you,

Today, I want to invite you to reflect on the stories you tell yourself that limit your joy and to invite you to consider a new story.

I use the word stories to refer to beliefs, opinions, assumptions, and other thoughts we tell ourselves, often without even noticing them. When our stories go unnoticed, they often hold us back from feeling good and making the choices that honor our needs. But when we shine light on our stories and bring them to our conscious awareness, they begin to lose their power and we gain more freedom to choose how we show up.

So, with that said, I invite you to ask yourself: What do you believe to be true about joy?

You might even pause the podcast, take out your journal, and write a stream of consciousness about everything you believe to be true about joy.

Then, ask yourself: Do any of these beliefs hold me back from experiencing joy or feeling the ways I want to feel?

If they do, you do not need to try to change your mind or erase these thoughts from your brain.

Instead, the way to change our stories is to become aware of them and then to get curious about what story might serve us more.

There’s one story that people who care deeply about the state of the world often tell ourselves, which limits our joy. It sounds something like this:

Who am I to feel good when so many other people feel bad? If I feel too good, then I am betraying people who feel less good. I can’t enjoy all that I have when so many people have so little. I cannot be happy and be in integrity with the heartache of the world at the same time.

Does that sound familiar to you?

If so, and if you are willing, I invite you to try on a new story, one that works well for me.

I’ll start with the words of poet Jack Gilbert who says:

“We must risk delight… We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”[1]

I believe that one small reason we’re at the point of imminent global self-destruction is that we changemakers too often forget that we have the capacity to hold the polarity of grief and praise.

Too often, we overwork, overgive, overdo, grow resentful and curmudgeonly, become mired in interpersonal conflict, succumb to cultures of commiseration and gossip, and in the end, drop out altogether. People who consider getting involved see how hard it looks and opt out.

Granted, our work often feels Sisyphean, like a never-ending, uphill battle to push a boulder up a hill. Sometimes, we need to vent and complain.

And yet, when we choose to pay attention, we can see tiny wins all around us—moments of unexpected agreement with someone who's often on the other side of the aisle, a shift in behavior from a colleague who’s been challenging us, an unexpected vote from a city councilor who’s typically conservative, the approval of a grant that our organization is depending on, a bit more funding for schools, sunshine streaming through the window.

If we do not celebrate these tiny wins, we’re far more likely to become exhausted, overwhelmed, or cynical, wondering if any of our efforts even matter.

When we notice and celebrate our tiny wins, we’re far more likely to fuel our tank for the long haul, protect the energy we need to make decisions that serve us and our communities, and enjoy our efforts to make a difference in the world.

Training our attention to notice what works and what brings us delight grows our capacity to get clear about what would bring us joy in the future, imagine a more just and joyful future, and choose next steps in that direction.

And as opposed to happiness, joy can be found in any circumstance. The word joy stems from the Greek word gau- meaning to rejoice.

In contrast, the English word happy stems from the Old Norse word happ meaning chance or good luck, and when the word first emerged in the late 1300s, it meant lucky, favored by fortune,

In the last two episodes, I shared three practices to help you nourish your joy—Tracking Glimmers, Orienting, and Taking in the Good.

These practices can make it easier to honor our needs because they help us notice when our needs are well-met, imagine a life in which our needs are well-met, and detect otherwise hidden opportunities to honor our needs.

But sometimes, it still can feel really vulnerable to feel or express joy. And if so if you do ever feel hesitant or nervous to really savor feelings of goodness, I created this episode for you.

Let’s start by discussing the work of clinical psychologist, Beatrice Beebe, around what she’s termed our windows of welcome.

For over four decades, Beatrice Beebe and her team have recorded and analyzed videos of mothers engaging in face-to-face interactions with their infants. Over this time, they’ve tracked how people’s earliest communications with their mothers affects how they communicate with themselves and the other people in their lives into adulthood.

Through their research, Beebe and her team made a discovery that has really big implications on how much joy—and other emotions— we allow ourselves to feel.

They named this discovery the windows of welcome. Here’s the basic premise:

When you and I came into this world, we had the capacity to express every possible human emotion—sadness, anger, fear, delight, disgust, excitement, you name it.[1]

But soon after we were born, we started tracking the emotional expressions which our caregivers displayed. And at around four months old, most of us began editing our emotional expressions based on what our caregivers accepted and reflected.

If our caregivers mirrored our emotions, meaning, when we smiled, they smiled back or when we frowned, they frowned back, then we knew they accepted our emotions.

But if our caregivers did not mirror our emotions, say they met our smile with a flat affect, we experienced less acceptance of what we were feeling and were apt to feel a sense of painful disconnection.

The process of tracking and editing out expressions shapes what Beatrice Beebe and her team named windows of welcome. 

Inside our windows of welcome are all the emotions that others reflected to us with warmth and that we developed relatively easy access to. Outside our windows are the emotions that we came to believe are unacceptable and that we therefore ignore, numb, or turn away from.

Windows of welcome are not only shaped during infancy but also during adulthood. For example, in many activist cultures, commiseration is a strategy for belonging. Many changemakers hold the belief that it’s wrong to feel joy in the midst of all the collective injustice and that if we allow ourselves to feel good, we’re betraying people who have it worse. If the people with whom we collaborate hold these beliefs, we are more likely to limit our expression of joy.

Another metaphor I find helpful for depicting how our relationships sometimes teach us to limit our joy is that of an emotional drawbridge. This one is from the work of Sarah Peyton and her book, Your Resonant Self.

When we humans attempt to share an emotion with another person, it's as if we extend one half of an emotional draw bridge toward them, reaching out across a chasm.

If the other person reflects what they see, it’s as if they’re extending their emotional bridge to meet ours. And we feel seen and understood.

But if the other person does not acknowledge our bridge or turns away from us, it can feel like our part of the bridge collapses down into a chasm. We’re apt to feel a jolt of shame like an electrical shock in response. This experience can be so painful that afterward, we might unconsciously decide it's safer not to fully experience or express that emotion, at least not with the person we’re interacting with.

If you’ve learned to unconsciously anticipate that other people will meet your delight with disapproval,

I invite you to imagine that you’re living thousands of years ago.

You and your family are hanging out around the fire, telling stories, having a good time, when suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you spot a moving shadow.

The first thought that enters your mind is, Tiger.

You don’t know whether it’s a real tiger or not, so what do you do? Do you go investigate the shadow? Or run and hide with your family?

If you hide, you miss out on the opportunity to discover what the shadow was.

But, if you check it out, you risk death.

You and I are descended from people who ran from the shaking bush.

Now, let’s fast forward to the present day:

Our ancestors’ tendency to stay alert for potential danger is still well and alive in our brains, and our negativity bias can make it harder for us to notice opportunities to meet our needs, stay focused on what we really want in midst of heartache and struggle, and to feel the ways we long to feel. It can feel hard to feel good.

The good news, though, is that extensive research proves that with consistent practice we can reshape our brains to notice what’s good and feel good about it.

In a moment, I’ll share with you a practice called Taking in the Good, which can expand our capacity to feel good in relatively no time at all.

But first, in order to depict why this practice can be so powerful, I want to share a quick primer on neuroplasticity—which is the brain's ability to learn and change.

Neurons are the cells within our body-brains that hold and transmit information. Neural synapses are the connections between neurons in our brains.

Every feeling, thought, and behavior has corresponding connections between the neurons and the parts of our brains and nervous systems.

Our neurons and connections between them grow and shift in response to our experiences. Each time we have a new moment of understanding, new connections form or are strengthened. Each time we feel a feeling, think a thought, or engage in a behavior, we strengthen the neural patterns associated with that feeling, thought, or behavior.

When our neural patterns become strong enough, the new feeling, thought, or behavior becomes a habit, and habit is a feeling, thought, or behavior we engage in largely without conscious thought.

Let me say that again: Each time we feel a feeling, think a thought, or engage in a behavior, we strengthen the neural patterns associated with that feeling, thought, or behavior. And when we practice feeling, thinking, or behaving in a certain way often enough, that feeling, thought, or behavior becomes habitual and arises within us with little conscious thought.

In other words, we little human animals learn new things, develop new skills, and cultivate new ways of being through repeated practice over time.

For example, when we practice speaking up with kindness and courage when someone makes a hurtful comment, we strengthen the parts of our brains associated with speaking up.

When we practice creating an agenda for a meeting beforehand, we strengthen the parts of our brains associated with planning agendas.

When we move through the nervousness of recording a new podcast, we strengthen the parts of our brains associated with recording podcasts.

Each time we notice an urge or pull in our bodies to react in a way that does not serve us, and we consciously choose to act differently, we strengthen the neural patterns related to that choice.

With enough repeated practice, new feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that once took a lot of effort become far easier. What was once a conscious choice becomes largely automatic and unconscious.

And although unconscious habits get a bad wrap, the reality is that nearly all of our brain’s activity is unconscious. If we had to think through every step of tying our shoes, driving to work, or riding a bike, we wouldn’t get anywhere. Where we get stuck is when we unconsciously react in ways that don’t serve...

I began my first coaching session in January 2013 with the question, “What’s new-and-good?”[1]

Since then, this question—What’s new and good?—has become an integral part of my life. I’ve started nearly every session since then with the same question, and most nights at the dinner table, my son, my partner, and I—and our friends when they join us—take turns asking each other what’s new and good.

I invite you to try asking yourself this question now, and think of something both new and good.

Now, you might think of something immediately. And if so, that’s awesome. I invite you to see if you can notice any pleasant feelings that arise in your body when you think of this thing that’s new and good.

Or, you might discover that it takes a moment to find an answer. In dominant culture, we have a tendency to focus on what’s hurting and what’s not working well. And those of us who are dedicated to fighting for justice and collective wellbeing often particularly struggle to take in the good around us.

You might also notice that immediately after you come up with a thought about what’s new and good, you follow it up with a caveat or a dismissal, that sound something like yeah that’s all right and all, but it would be even better if xyz happened or yeah, I did that thing but I still need to do all these other things too. It’s as if you were swatting away your joy.

In future episodes, we’ll talk about why we struggle to fully savor the goodness around us. But today, I want to offer a practice to help you start shifting your attention toward detecting what is new and good.

I call this practice Tracking Glimmers.

Social worker Deb Dana coined the term glimmers as a positive counterpart to the more commonly-used word triggers.

People often use the word triggers to refer to a cue—something we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or think—that prompts feelings of stress or fear.

In contrast, glimmers are cues that prompt feelings of safety, wellbeing, delight, accomplishment, and other pleasant feelings.

They’re quick sparks of the feelings we want to feel, tiny indications that our needs are being met, moments that nourish our energy, bring us delight, or move us closer toward our goals.

Although there are so many factors that impact our ability to feel joy, many of which are outside our control, the one that we have the most control over—and which can have a really potent impact—is where we put our attention.

When we track glimmers, we get curious and search for cues of what brings us delight and what helps us meet our needs. When we track glimmers, we follow the tracks of our joy like a huntress, a detective, or a search and rescue team.

And when we learn what fills our cup through this practice, we’re far more likely to make choices that fuel our tank for the long haul. When we study what helps us  meet our needs, we train our brains to detect opportunities to meet our needs that we may have otherwise overlooked and we grow our capacity to imagine and bring forth a world in which all peoples’ needs are met.

With this in mind, I invite you to get a glimmer journal. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I prefer cheap Mead notebooks because I can be messy in them.

Once you have your journal, place it next to your bed, and write down glimmers from the day before you go to bed . Here are some questions you might ask:

What brought me a sense of safety, wellbeing, delight, or accomplishment today?

What helped me meet my needs?

What moved me closer to accomplishing my goals?

Who or what am I grateful for?

Who might I want to say thank you to?

Then, pay attention to how tracking glimmers  makes you feel.

If you have a hard time thinking of anything positive, experiment with lowering your bar. New and good don’t not mean brand new and extraordinary. Instead of looking for something that’s a ten on a scale on which zero is no feeling and ten is ecstasy, look for a one, a two,

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural episode of The Inner Work of Changemaking, where we will share practical guidance to help you cultivate the capacity for impact and joy.

I’m your host Katherine Golub, joining you from the unceded, ancestral lands of the Pocumtuck people, colonially known as Greenfield, Massachusetts.

This podcast is a love letter to those of us who have heard the call of these times, those of us who believe that a better world is possible and who are committed to doing our part to bring forth that world.

Because our work is hard, and we deserve support.

If you ever feel exhausted, frustrated, saddened, bewildered, alone, despairing, self-doubting, overwhelmed, or stressed out in your work to make a difference in this world, here’s what I want you to know:

You are not alone.

And burnout is not inevitable. It is possible to feel well-nourished and fully alive as we show up for change in this world.

For over a decade, I’ve coached community leaders, organizers, activists, and healers, and during this time, I’ve discovered practices that consistently help my clients heal and prevent burnout, cultivate clarity and confidence, discover that imperfect yet supportive balance, and show up more effectively. In this podcast, I will share these practices with you.

My experience coaching changemakers, doing my own work on myself, and training extensively in the fields of human development, somatics, systems change, community organizing, interpersonal communication, group facilitation, and anti-oppression have convinced me that we do not have to choose between caring for others or caring for ourselves.

We can live in the both/and.

We can feel good about our contribution and having fun doing the work and living our lives, we can show up for justice and work in life-affirming ways.

And I’ve discovered that the very same practices that can help us increase our impact can also increase our joy.

Now, you may be wondering, who is Katherine—a white, cisgender, middle class, currently able-bodied, and multi-privileged woman—to be speaking to the intersections of personal and collective transformation?

It is a really important question. And to answer it, I want to give you just a snippet of what brought me to doing this work:

I first became politicized as a high school senior in 1999 while learning about US foreign policy in Central America. During college I interned on Taos Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, started the Progressive Students’ Alliance at my college, mobilized students against the war in Iraq, tuition hikes, and sweatshop procurement, directed the field canvass for the CT Citizen Action Group, and did human rights accompaniment and solidarity research in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia. During those years, I learned a lot at a young age about my tendencies toward martyrdom and how not to show up as a white person.

After college, I worked for several years in strategic affairs for UNITE HERE!, the hotel workers’ union, lobbying for fair organizing rights for hotel works in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Arizona.

And while I fell quickly in love with activism, in those early years, it took a toll. I based my self-worth on my success, neglected my relationships, and exhausted myself. As a result, I struggled with chronic anxiety, migraines, and other health problems.

Then, a series of wake-up calls compelled me to change paths. First, on a work trip to DC, I got the call that my partner, who was undocumented at the time, had been racially profiled and stopped by a cop while driving to work. He was detained and then deported back to Mexico six months later. I moved from CT to Arizona to be closer to him, and few months after that, I discovered—at a routine doctor’s visit—that I was pregnant. Finally, in January 2008, I left my union job and moved to Oaxaca, Mexico, seven months pregnant.

At that point, I knew that if I was going to be the mother I wanted to...