This is a phrase that can be used any time, and is at the core of what we prioritize in our work. We use it the most within our work with folx because it enables meta-communication, meta-analysis, and the continuation of communication. More on each later, so for now just know all are as important as nuance when you want to be accurate.
To us, it's a phrase that seeks to provoke a certain starting point in your self and the other when it is used well enough alone and together. Whether or not both parties are ready to join yet in a certain time and space is not the point.
It's quite literally a health and balance primer. As such, it creates harmony and accuracy.
It is a sense of renewal, a reboot that resets the systems (nervous, thought, interpersonal, societal, etc.) at play if and when it is delivered, heard, and internalized well enough. It must be trusted though!
We need to be trusted for any of our messages to go where they need to go together. No one can guarantee their messages will be internalized by the other in that very instant.
However, if held strong enough, or firm enough, a phrase like this can prompt a change of course in discourse into the more accurate, sustainable, and harmonious direction. Within all of this, we have to plainly acknowledge that there are always many variables at play within communication, many of which are unseen and unincorporated our mind's eye and conscious awareness; all of which are consistently influencing the dialogue's direction, trajectory, and traction in some way.
We focus on the active process of challenging those variables, challenging people to be more ready to notice and openly acknowledge them. This way, the currents of culture (while they have been held too firmly and ignorantly out of insecurity or outdated social norms before, doesn't matter anymore) and society can be openly and certainly transcended, especially with the right ingredients of psychology process, emotional awareness, and perhaps most importantly, finesse with our linguistic awareness and leverage.
The best part: Anyone can learn to develop these innate skills if it's described and developed in a digestible, layered, coherent, and intelligent way.
To shed more light on what we mean, consider how you've read this post thus far.
Have you read it as if it is a female writing/talking? Or male? Or gender neutral?
Which one of us do you "see" writing/voicing so far?
Even further, have you noticed how 'masculine' and 'feminine' the voice of our messaging feels?
Regardless, it is too easy to follow the path of least resistance and most automatic, our defaults. Then, we tend to move on to other things, not noticing how much bias was built-in to our history.
Perhaps given the colors in our logo, you've used a bit more of a feminine frame. Or because the picture does not have certain colors and has more of a block and equation feel to it, you used a more masculine frame. These are merely stereotypes that come to mind, certainly not only true defaults of mind. Remember, equations of mind can and should evolve over time, especially now.
We certainly realize these prescribed answers are completely stereotypical in their content, framing, and reductiveness too. At the same time, it is essential to further the dialogue about how such automatic norms and thoughts developed over our societal history, and why they developed; what their function was, and then, how we can reform ourselves best in order to create new norms that take into account the reality that we have, and always will to varying degrees, to continue deal with. The left over effects, if you will, from their cultural cause and effects, are the most significant, low-hanging fruit we can consciously aim at.
With all of this to consider, dissonance is about as important as it gets, isn't it? Automatic think causes dissonance in some even though it will never in another. But how come? Why can't we all just get along?
While someone (some of us) may not be experiencing much dissonance these days, others are experiencing a lot of it unknowingly everyday, and those experiencing dissonance do deserve a level of patience, understanding, and accommodation as to why new norms are needing to be developed in order to help us evolve individually and interpersonally, especially as space gets tight, and our climates (political and otherwise) continue to shift.
Remember, symptoms are not systems, but systems tend to create symptoms, which then cause people to scapegoat quickly. Isn't this phrase not as simple as it used to seem? Agreed. And not a lot is anymore!
These days it seems like we're always in the middle of a puzzle, trying to complete this one so we can move on to the next one...
Clues and cues, without resorting to too much accusing, perhaps work the best for everyone's sanity and safety.
It's amazing what the mind does automatically based on what it's been taught historically. It is critical that we more precisely prompt each other and continue a conversation that challenges the automatic cues in people's minds, as this is the only way to create more necessary nuance within the current of our collective conversation. Down that path we'll be able to stay accurate.
This work empowers "the system" by empowering the individual and collective mind in all of us.
Don't forget to think in averages, as we know that this precise approach empowers us to improve the averages in individuals, leaders, and systems; to not just follow suit, but actively work to help us come together, work together, gather better, and to create alternative, enhanced, systemically restructuring routes of progress.
We all need to be able to adapt more effectively to change, to make change more efficient and effective, even advantageous in times where rapid change is inevitable and consistent all over the world.
For now, we'll wrap up with these questions and equations of mind:
How quickly can we change the trajectory of an automatic thought/belief thread?
How quickly can we evolve an existing, outdated norm into a new, better norm that can accurately reforming our mind sub-consciously and co-consciously?
If the answer is quickly, how can we help more people join this path more readily and swiftly? Especially as we must acknowledge the fact that changes of course tend to cause even more resistance in people subconsciously and unconsciously, given the varied/different function(s) change creates in our subcultures co-consciously.
That was a lot. Maybe too much! To simply say: Basically, given our overall make-up and history, how can we evolve the mistrust of reform? How can we make prosocial norms the first thing we resort to when we're feeling insecure? Especially when another person is feeling all out of sorts?
To that end, let us begin again, and work together better,