What if what we are actually looking for, is equilibrium?

Remember how hard it was to balance a teetertotter with your friends? Even if two of you were the same height and similar build, it was almost impossible. When it did find stillness, it was for a millisecond. Then gravity kicked back in. Doing it by yourself, standing in the middle, was even harder - because you had almost no leverage.

?What if this is the same reason that our pursuit “equality” isn’t really working. What if we are pursuing the wrong state? What if it’s just as hard to find and as impossible to maintain, as the teetertotter. Perhaps we need to stop working against universal laws of motion and gravity and start working with them, instead.

?What if we took the e(go) out of equality, and focused on qualities instead.

?Equality is defined as making everything equal, having equal opportunities.

?What if that was always gonna be a total crap shoot? What if that’s just our inner toddler wanting exactly the same thing as our older sibling? Depending on what that things is, it could be completely unreasonable.

?The DNA that we inherited from our ancestors has made us prone to developing certain skills and attributes. It's been very clear throughout my life that my British and Scottish friends handle alcohol way better than myself - or any of fellow Mennonites. The environment we grow up in, is also largely responsible for turning those genes on and off. We already know that nature and nurture both play roles. The combo of those two things has left us in a society where the same word or phrase can mean multiple different things to different people.

?So how is trying to squeeze every single person through the exact same “opportunity” (or putting them on the same Teeter Totter and demanding they make it balance perfectly,) even wise?

?This may feel backwards to your brain, like I am trying to mess with it, but I promise you that I am not. I am trying to find a better question, to take this unrealistic goal, and it’s pressures, off of your shoulders. You’ve got the last 18 months to carry right now, that’s enough. The intent behind the pursuit is worthy, the intent is correct, it's the goal posts that are in the wrong place.

It is clear that the original question we asked, which resulted in modern day demand for equality, is not giving us the right answer. What if our un-evolved notion of equality is like a little door at the back of the massive building called happiness, and we don’t even know that there are huge, easy to walk through, shipping doors at the front? You can get a lot more people into the building through the big front doors than you can through that back one.

What if we embrace the laws of physics and balance (which is that nothing is every actually still, even mountains vibrate and move constantly) and try to view that building as a space of happiness through a “dynamic equality.” or "equilibrium." What if we then come to understand that the way to get everyone in there, is through the front doors, called “Quality.” What if looking for an equilibrium of human qualities was easier?

People do not want the same things?- at least not in the way that our collective pursuit of equality assumes they do.

?The definition of Equality is

“the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities. (noun) and if you take the math route, it’s?“a symbolic expression of the fact that two quantities are equal; an equation.”

?The definition of Quality is

“the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.”

?The definition of Equilibrium is

“a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced.”

Equality sounds difficult, doesn't it?

An equilibrium of qualities feels better, right? Doesn't it take so much pressure off? It feels better because when you pursue something that works with universal laws and principles, it gets a lot easier. Fighting the way the universe works is exhausting. Just look at your life. lol. sorry, kinda. I've been in the same boat. I say that with enormous compassion and empathy.?

Remember how hard it was to be equal on the playground? Remember how the good teachers encouraged you to find the things that you were good at, that set you apart? To ground yourself in what you valued and just be yourself? Remember how, if you got to that place inside you, how you felt equal for a moment, in a room full of everyone that was different? Remember how as you grew up, you noticed that someone qualities often balanced out some of the things that you didn’t like about them? Remember how you felt when you had a friend or a partner whose qualities balanced yours out and you felt a blissful equilibrium?

?What if that is the gear we need to shift back down to?

?What if that was how we hired? How we built our teams? Would pursuing a balance of qualities in your organization not automatically create an inclusive and diverse equilibrium? ...without even trying very hard?

I’m telling you, we really are going about this the wrong way. I expanded in detail on how wrong we really are in the context of #genderinequality and how we could easily solve it by pursuing a balance of masculine and feminine energy on our teams in my musings on feminism “How Feminism F`d up”. You can take those concepts and principles and apply them to race, income disparity, to anything.

People want to be seen and valued and be able to offer what they have worked towards being able to offer. This is what makes us happy. We want to be happy.

I believe that when given the choice, we would all choose the feeling of equilibrium, over a static equality. People like or don’t like you because of the way you made them feel, not because of some static opinion or skill you have.

We want a value placed on our qualities – the ones that we innately have and the ones we chose to developed. The only reason that changed is because we lost track of our qualities. In the race up the ladder of affluence, we dropped the things that felt like they would get in our way. (again, see that article on feminism I mentioned, for a full view on this.) Everyone that has managed to come back to themselves, who have rediscovered their "why", that have healed whatever it was that made them doubt their worth, is happy to be able to work for a suitable energy exchange.

Money is a tangible currency for an energy exchange, nothing more. It was never evil, it was never the root cause of anything. Someone translated that sentence wrong. Money is how we measure what our energy was worth. We put hours into doing a job, we put our life force into work, we need that life force to come back to us in the form of something we can use to support our life. The only reason all the tangible currency has been stored up by the 1% is because the rest of us forgot our worth. Like the little match girl, we sold our matches for pennies. When there were only a few left, we lit them in the cold dark room for a moment of warmth and got lost in a daydream of better days and slowly froze to death. You know the story right? The archetypes at work in this story are in many of us. We like a good, sad story of victimhood where we can feel sorry and believe she couldn’t have done anything else. It means there is no work to do. (I'll have to leave that for another time) What we need to do, in this case, is take a step back and ask if there was another way for her.

How about instead of sinking into our fate as a victim, we go just outside of town for 20 minutes, into the forest, gather up some sticks? Maybe take them home and light a fire to keep us warm and alive instead of selling our last match? And then when we felt better, what if we gathered more sticks and bundled them up to sell with some matches, for a better profit?

This is the difference between those that accept less in return for what they give, and those that don’t. However - the things that keep us from breaking our personal glass ceiling are also very real though. Mental models that we inherit from our families, trauma that keeps us stuck, a microbiome that was damaged and impacts our brain and mood, and all the other things psychology and neuroscience are revealing to us these days. (I talk about a lot of these things in my blogs on my website.)

When we start to understand this imbalance within ourselves, and start to heal them (find a balance, worth and boundaries) we automatically start to reject people, environments, jobs and bosses that will not give back to us what we give to them. When we start asking for more, in a non-accusatory, non-blaming way, everything changes.

If a company starts to simply hire for qualities and they have strategy for "getting away" with this, because they have changed the language and perception of these things in their organization, there is an automatic shift. When you stop looking an employee as a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’, you don’t trigger the unconscious biases that we all have, you move past it – you see a quality and effort and you attach a value to that, not to the person. This is working with the universal laws and principles of energy that Newton and Einstein, and the rest of them, have already revealed to us. (more on that in “Exposing Corporate Wellness” and “Our Endgame Playbook” )

?That’s your strategy on this, btw, that’s how we outsmart our biases. Words can trigger a cascade of chemicals into the blood stream, for better or worse. The right words, that come out of better questions, can also sneak under the trigger and create psychological safety like nothing else can. Language matters. And the way we, as leaders, resonate with those words (authenticity wins), is that last determinant of how that conversation goes.

?We can’t outsmart the universe, but we can outsmart our old psychology – and it is necessary to do so – our brains and nervous systems have not evolved to keep up with our modern day, tech society. If there is one concept that I based everything that I do, teach, facilitate or assess, it is in this quote.

The more you learn about trauma, about mental models and paradigms, mental health, how our stories inform our reality, how our biography impacts our biology , the more you realize that Ethan got this right.

Strategy is needed. What you do not need is another system or program. You can’t system your way out of psychological brick walls.

As mentioned, I often speak to changing the language as a good strategy. It’s the easiest way to get past our deep triggers. When you change the language, you change what gets triggered. When you are not battling ghosts of discrimination and bias past, you have space to set a new precedent and create a new paradigm. And if you work with the universe’s way of doing things, that paradigm can shift pretty fast.

?End of the day:

“Equality is so 1980s.”

#sorrynotsorry

Our notion of equality came from the same innocent ignorance, (which was unavoidable because of the overwhelm of those years,) that made us believe that fats in our diet caused cholesterol. This is parking lot science at best.

"You measure what you can see, and you inevitably decide that what you can see is what matters. Cholesterol is a classic example. It’s the first factor related to heart disease that we could measure. So, the science got obsessed with cholesterol, and cholesterol became the cause of heart disease, and dietary cholesterol was what you had to eliminate. This is parking lot science. It’s based on the parable of a man who loses his key in a parking lot at night. He spends all his time looking for it under the lights even though he knows that’s not where he lost it, because that’s where he can see best." Michael Pollan

?Equality between humans is not scientifically possible. And words matter. Remember what I said about how the universe hears us? In this case, it just hears that we want equality, which it knows is not possible, and so it keeps saying, “good luck, call me when you want something I can help you with.”

An equilibrium of qualities, of opposing forces balancing each other, is what we need.

Equilibrium among humans that are alive, is scientifically possible – and I truly believe that this goal is where our intent behind 'equality' came from - but the misguided path that we on currently on, will fail. This is not a shoot for the moon and land among the stars situation. The moon in this case doesn’t exist, so there are no stars to land in either.

Anyway. I can hear my 4 year old stirring. Time to mom. My apologies for the inevitable typos of this first draft.

I’m here if you’d like to chat about this. I am easy to chat with. You'll find my bio, downloadable PDFs on some of my services and a link to schedule a discovery call on my corporate page. I know you may have never heard of a “Corporate Wellness Strategist” before, I hadn’t until me either, so that’s why I write all this, so you can get to know me. I’m always up for a no-obligation chat, there is no hard sell. Why? Because Newton’s Third Law ;) ...and because if I am not the right fit for you and you’re not the right company for me (I have run into this) then why would we force anything?

?Enjoy your weekend. Peace out.

Sonia

?thewholeavocado.com

#corporatewellness #stressmanagement #diversityandinclusion #equality #feminism #companyculture #thewholeavocado