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Business Beyond Capitalism

Business Beyond Capitalism

by | Mar 25, 2022 | Business, Capitalism

Business Beyond Capitalism

I saw this sign the other day – People & Planet over Profit. 

As a climate and environmental activist, it’s not the first time I’ve seen it. I’m sure it is held high at climate strikes all over the world today as the Global Climate Strike lead by Fridays for Future takes place. 

This message is important – the climate crisis & ecological breakdown we face is a result of unchecked capitalism, its insatiable need for infinite growth on a finite planet.

What does this mean for ethical entrepreneurs though?

How often do we hold ourselves back, afraid that turning a profit or making money is inherently exploitive?  

Afraid that to be flourishing financially – to live a rich & abundant life – is to participate in an unjust system? Struggling with values clashes as we create a more beautiful world, while also existing in the one that we have?

Here’s what we need to understand: business is not the same thing as capitalism. Money is not the same thing as capitalism.  Profit is not inherently exploitive.  

Business is a form of trade, a way of sharing our gifts, talents and interests. A way to be fairly compensated for our labour.   

Capitalism is a social, cultural & economic construct. On the surface, it sounds reasonable: a system in which trade and industry are controlled by private owners, rather than by the state. 

But it’s also based on three fundamental principles:

1.    The pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet.

2.    The artificial production of scarcity.

3.    The devaluation of living systems to lifeless resources

It’s these principles that lead climate & environmental activists, like myself, to imagine a world beyond capitalism. 

To demand new values, new visions, new systems based on regenerative principles – life giving principles. To place planet & people at the front of what we do.

And here’s the thing: we can do that in business too. 

There is business beyond capitalism.  

And it doesn’t require being broke, scarce or playing small.

There’s a world that allows for our social, financial & ecological flourishing.

But we need to imagine it first.

Can you let yourself feel that world today? 

Can you begin to imagine your Business Beyond Capitalism? 

The Past & Present Together

The Past & Present Together

by | Feb 21, 2022 | Uncategorized

While Covid has dominated the news (and my own world) the last few weeks, it’s been heartening to hear some different news where the Colston Four were found not guilty in the UK.

If you haven’t followed, in June 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests were sprouting around the world, four activists in Bristol helped topple a statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston. They faced charges for causing criminal damage, and after a two week trial, were recently found not guilty.

Now, this email isn’t about statues, or what should happen to them.

It’s about the moral reckoning with our history – and our present – that is just in its infancy.

The UK (and much of the colonised world, including my home country, Australia) has a moral duty to reckon with its past, to recognise that much of its prosperity has come off the back of slavery and other atrocities.

But we also need to reckon with our present.  With the violence & inequality inherent to capitalism, the continued exploitation of the global south, our extractive relationship to the natural world, and with all the ways structural racism & white-bodied supremacy still exists today**.

You see, capitalism and supremacy culture both have roots in colonisation (which reminds me of this simple but useful chart from Rupa Marya).

And they’re both products of profound disconnection.   

Disconnection from the natural world, allowing endless extraction.

Disconnection from each other, our shared humanity, allowing exploitation.

Disconnection from our bodies, losing their wisdom and allowing their overwork.

Disconnection from our heart and spirit, allowing growth and profit to become a new form of worship. 

And so, part of healing the root of capitalism & supremacy culture must be to practice an active reconnection.

With nature. With ourselves. With each other. With truth. 

And we must rebuild our systems to be rooted in connection – with empathy, truth, justice at their heart.

Connection can sound naïve; I don’t dispute that. I also don’t presume that the exploitation or trauma of the last 500 years will be healed through kumbaya.   

But I also know that we can’t have the moral reckoning we need without first un-thinging each other and the natural world, to feel & know the animating spirit (life) that weaves between each and every living being. 

Reconnection is also at the heart of two programs starting soon – if you’re wanting to dive deeper, stay tuned for dates, workshops & more soon. 

Internal Revolution: Ending Burnout Cycles & Culture, which is really about reconnecting to our bodies and honouring what is true for us. 

Business for the Revolution. Weaving anti-capitalist & anti-oppressive practice, it’s designed for solopreneurs & small business owners to create a thriving business beyond capitalism.

As always, let me know what you think – I value every response. 

Love & courage,

Laura

Regenerative Culture

Regenerative Culture

by | Feb 21, 2022 | Business, Capitalism

It may be Autumn here in the southern hemisphere, but this time of year, with Easter, Ramadan, Passover & other holy holidays, is still a time of renewal and resurrection.  Can we also make it a time of regeneration?

The word regenerative is more & more commonplace lately.  

Regenerative leadership.

Regenerative farming.

Regenerative banking.

Regenerative culture.

But what does this mean?

The word regenerate means to renew or restore something, especially after it has been damaged or lost. The act or process of regenerating is regeneration.

You see, our current economy & systems – whether they be agricultural, justice or financial – are devoid of life.  They’re soulless, based on principles that go against the wisdom & soul of nature.  

Take capitalism as an example.  

One of capitalism’s defining features is the pursuit of never-ending growth.  Not only is this not possible on a finite planet, it’s out of alignment with life-giving principles – as Edward Abbey once said, growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. 

We live at a pivotal choice point in time.  Whether it’s war or climate change or widening inequality & democratic instability, our systems are not supportive of life.  

This is why the word regenerative matters so much right now. 

To choose renewal, to choose resurrection, to choose regeneration.

To infuse our environment, systems and culture with life-giving principles.  To mimic nature’s cycles & seasons, base our designs on circularity, embody a new form of leadership – away from the hierarchical, top-down, follow-me approach to one that is emergent, trusting & encompassing of everyone’s skills and offerings.

So I want to ask, what could regenerative culture look like in your life?

What part of your work or community could be infused with the care & energy reflective of regeneration? 

Where can you expand your sense of possibility to allow regenerative wisdom to enter? 

Let me know what you think – I love to hear from you.

Laura x 

Now Is The Time

Now Is The Time

by | Jan 10, 2022 | Uncategorized

Happy New Year!

Collectively we look at a new year as a time of new beginnings.  A chance to wipe the slate clean, to reimagine and recreate our lives anew. 

New beginnings are everywhere though.  In every moment, in every choice, we hold the possibility of something new.

The question is what we want to choose. What new beginning we’d like to experience. 

If you’ve read Conversations with God, you may be familiar with a line that says “the purpose of life is to create your Self anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision you ever held about Who You Are. It is to announce and become, express and fulfil, experience and know your true Self.”

What is the grandest version of the greatest vision you hold about who you are?

What is the grandest version of the greatest vision you hold for how the world could be? 

None of us hold the power alone to direct the world.  We carry that power together.  But it’s in every choice we make – indeed, every thought we think – that we have the option of affecting change and redirecting the way we collectively move and live.

In reality, our choices are never for us alone.  

As we move gently into this new beginning, I’ll leave you with you a poem that is speaking to me.  

I’d love to hear what is speaking to you. 

Now is the time.
Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God?

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
with veracity and love.

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
That this is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is Sacred.

~ Hafiz

Love & courage,

Laura 

Fire & Water: Holding Space for Revolutionary Anger

Fire & Water: Holding Space for Revolutionary Anger

by | Nov 23, 2021 | Activism, Anger

Anger is a call to action, a just and moral response.  Anger can be fuel. And yet anger without skill, without wisdom, is like a fire that can burn everything, including myself.  

I felt a wave of anger wash over me last night as I read about the sentencing of an activist to a year in prison, with six months no parole. He was part of a recent successful blockade of the world’s largest coal port near Newcastle (north of Sydney) for 10 days, actions I’d found inspiring and important post-COP.  

I watched my anger at his sentencing & the police overreach meld with rage at the unjustness of it all.  Rage at the ecocide that happens around us.  Rage at legal & media bias, at the general unfairness, at the fact this is where we’ve come to. 

This frustration is nothing new – the Government of Australia represents so few of my values, so little compassion, humility or love.  It struggles to use its imagination, so attached to the status quo.

I remind myself that change doesn’t happen in the headlines. It happens in the margins, the liminal, the spaces in-between.  I know that the change I seek won’t come from government, rather will come to transform government. 

And yet I also sit with what to do with this anger.  The fury and rage and grief for all that is lost, all that is unjust, all that is not okay with the world.  

The spiritual upbringing I had taught me to avoid anger. That it was based in fear, a ‘negative’ emotion, and that I would better serve focusing on what I want to create. 

The activist side of me would tell me that anger is useful, a call to rise up, to hold those in power accountable for what happens.  That anger is right and just and moral, to let it fuel me into action.  To not let go, and to hold on to its power. 

Both are true in parts, though neither complete on their own.  Anger is a call to action, a just and moral response.  Anger can be fuel. And yet anger without skill, without wisdom, is like a fire that can burn everything, including myself.  

Anger unchecked, unexamined, leads to conflict, to twitter wars, to bitterness, partisanship & division, to burnout and to violence (physical or emotional). 

And so what we need is not to avoid our anger, not to bypass it it while we speak of loving our enemies, or to push it down while we continue with business as usual, but also not to have it consume is, allowing our anger to control the flow of our thoughts and actions, assuming that change comes from our rage alone.

Like all fires, we need the water, the flow, to temper our anger and guide it.  

My anger at this time exists for a reason. It is both a bodyguard to the grief & sadness I feel at this time.  (For anyone who’s seen Morning Wars recently, as Bradley says,  “I’m not angry, I’m hurt, anger is just what I know what to do with”.)

And my anger is also a call to action. To not be complacent. To not settle back. To never forget that we are in a liminal space and time in the world, and that if we want the future that we dream of, that we must work actively to dismantle the systems that work against it.  

I don’t subscribe to a philosophy of good versus evil, but I do believe we must actively disrupt systems that exist to perpetuate business as usual  However, dismantling systems of injustice cannot be centred just on a person, policy or position, but must also include the very mindset that allowed us to reach the point we’re at; the disconnection of our selves from life.  

Our anger should be informing our actions, but not determining of them, and must be tempered with wisdom.   

So today I sit with my anger. I remind myself of my commitment to nonviolence, and I explore the ways I do and don’t yet embody it.  I engage with and re-commit to my own activism. I let my anger inform me of my sadness, holding space for it,  and I let it ignite my passion, my love, and all that which I am called to.

If you’re wanting to unpack the power & troubles of  anger, consider joining Love & Anger starting in early 2022.

Join

The Burnout Myths

The Burnout Myths

by | Sep 15, 2021 | burnout

The Burnout Myths

Burnout is a system problem manifesting in individuals

Have you ever felt burnt-out?

I hit my peak burnout about three years ago.

It started with jaw pain & insomnia, a creeping feeling of cynicism for work I cared deeply about.

Then came the anxiety, the exhaustion, irritability and a sense of being always on-edge.

I felt completely lost.  I knew something needed to change, but everything was so overwhelming it was hard to see a way out.

This time has deeply informed my work with burnout now.

Changemakers & activists (along with caregivers & healthcare) disproportionately suffer from burnout.

It derails our goals, careers, relationships, movements & of course our health.

But despite how common it is, there are still so many burnout myths that we hold.  Here are a few of them:

#Myth: That we can heal burnout with a vacation or weekend off.  We think “I’ve just got to get through till the weekend/semester end/holidays” or “I just need a week off and then I’ll be fine”.

#Truth: Burnout will return – probably worse – if we don’t address the underlying causes & ways of working.  Time off is great, and probably necessary, but it needs to be part of our healing, and not just a bandaid.

#Myth: Burnout is a sign of weakness or a personal failing

#Truth: Burnout is the result of ways of working that do not support us.  It’s a system problem manifesting in individuals and so there is work to do at two levels.

First, within us as individuals – our bodies, hearts and minds. Secondly, within us as a community, in how we come together, the working styles we embody and our relationship to conflict, scarcity and belonging.

#Myth: Burnout & stress are a part of life… and part of being a changemaker

#Truth: Stress is natural & healthy to a degree, but chronic stress, which leads to burnout is not. Stress & burnout do not make you any more impactful as a changemaker, and in no way is burnout part of ‘adulting’ or ‘life’.

You can view more burnout myths over on Instagram.

Starting October 10 is Internal Revolution: Ending Burnout Cycles & Culture. This is a four-week online course for changemakers & activists.

Join

WTH is internalised capitalism?

WTH is internalised capitalism?

by | Sep 15, 2021 | Uncategorized

Do you ever feel like you need to be doing more? Or perhaps feel guilty for resting?  How about prioritising work over pleasure?

I have.  And if you’ve also felt this way, you may also have internalised capitalism.

This isn’t a blog about the virtues or problems of capitalism, but rather how our collective systems are reflected within us and as us.

We live in a highly individualistic society.  Our systems tend to value a growing economy, profit, productivity and output more than things like meaning, rest or pleasure (or I dare say, even life).

This value system – of output & growth above all else – is then reflected in how we approach ideas of success, impact or wellbeing. 

So as an example while there has been a boom in corporate wellness programs and mindfulness in recent years, it hasn’t just been because it’s good for our health or wellbeing, it’s been attached to the idea of increased productivity.  Mindfulness will help you work even faster!*

Whether we consciously subscribe to these values or not, we often embody traits that are reflective of capitalism. Being always on, 24/7. Attaching our value to our productivity.  Prioritising work over pleasure or rest (even when our bodies are crying out for it).

We extract our inner resources in the same way we endlessly extract from the Earth.

We glorify being busy – as if busy is a sign of success, value or impact.

if you’re taking a break from working right now, how are you feeling? Do you feel slightly unproductive? A little guilty for not completing something or doing more?

We sometimes try to make change happen by using the same culture that capitalism extolls.   Work harder. Work longer.  Do more.

There’s an embodiment of scarcity – there’s not enough time, there’s not enough people to do the work, there’s not enough funding, change isn’t happening fast enough. 

We neglect our health, we link our value and worth to what we produce, and we feel guilty when we rest.

And of course, all of this, results in burnout.

Now, internalised capitalism isn’t the only reason burnout happens, but if this sounds vaguely familiar, I’d like to invite you to join a free workshop on Ending Burnout for Activists & Changemakers. 

You can find your best time zone option by selecting:

Sunday: 26 September: 9:30am UK | 6:30pm Sydney | 8:30pm NZ.
Tuesday, 28 September: 3:30 Pacific US | 6:30pm Eastern US
Tuesday, 5 October: 7:30pm UK | 8:30pm CET

NB: This isn’t to diss mindfulness – I teach meditation & mindfulness because they can be life changing.  But we need to be careful not to use it as a way to extract more from ourselves. 

Feeling anxious about the world?

Feeling anxious about the world?

by | Aug 25, 2021 | change making, Uncategorized

Embodiment for Eco-AnxietyFeeling anxious about the world? Yeah, me too.

We live in uncertain times.

From the climate crisis to racial violence to COVID and the pandemic – the scale and urgency of it all can be overwhelming. Our nervous systems can feel like they are in hyper-drive, each piece of news building on the anxiety and stress we’re experiencing.

How do we calm our overwhelmed bodies so that we can respond effectively – and compassionately – to the crises we face?

How can we create meaning amongst the uncertainty and anxiety?

The answer – at least in part – lies in our body.

It’s pretty natural that we try to escape the body when we’re stressed or feeling anxious – it’s not exactly a comfortable place to be (think butterflies, digestive trouble, back pain, muscle tension, headaches – to name a few).

And so we do something to check out – we pick up a drink or a snack, we dive into work, we distract ourselves with Instagram or dive back to the safety of our mind (if you’re anything like me you’ve probably spent some time trying to ‘think’ your way to being less stressed).

Rarely though, do we find the safety we’re looking for through escaping the body.

You see, when we’re feeling anxious about the world or stressed we’re seeking refuge, we’re seeking comfort, we’re seeking safety.

Safety isn’t found in our mind, but in our body.

If this resonates with you, you can join one of our regular workshops on Embodiment for Eco-Anxiety. It will cover some simple body-based practices* to help us explore our relationship to these times in our body, and to bring a sense of safety to our overwhelmed nervous systems.

On Afghanistan: Head, Heart & Hands in Action

On Afghanistan: Head, Heart & Hands in Action

by | Aug 25, 2021 | Activism, change making

Afghanistan head heart handsI don’t know about you, but I’ve been devastated by the news this week. Watching the scenes in Afghanistan has been heartbreaking, and I’ve had feeling of grief, anger & powerlessness wash over me.

It can be hard to know what to do with news so far away, so seemingly out of our control.

But we can let the enormity of our feelings freeze us into inaction, or we can use our rage & our grief to catalyse our head, heart & hands into action.

If you’re wondering what this might look like this week, the below are some options.

Head: Learn about Afghanistan – it’s history, culture, people, landscape. Its history is long & complex but if you’re reading this you likely come from a country that has played a role in that history for at least the last two decades (and for the US, UK, Russia and others, much longer).  If you’re needing a little more hope over this time, read the Kabul Peace House by Mark Isaacs.

Heart: Our anger stands as a gatekeeper to our love. Let us feel it, & let us use its spark, but may we allow love to guide our actions. This week, use your spiritual practice in offer of those who are suffering. Whether through prayer or loving-kindness meditation, offer your compassion each day to those that are suffering, your wish that they be free from suffering, and your prayer that peace be embodied.

Hands: Call your local representative – ask that they increase the amount of Afghan refugees being accepted, that they offer protection to any temporary Afghan visa holders, and that they support the visas of family who may still be in the country. 
Get involved with local refugee organisations in your area – you can volunteer or be part of a campaign to influence policy. Donate to organisations that are doing work on the ground like Ascend Athletics, BRAC, Mahboba’s Promise or others.

How can you use your head, heart & hands in service? What would you add to this?

Self Care Should Be a Driver to Community Care

Self Care Should Be a Driver to Community Care

by | Jul 26, 2021 | self care

I was on a podcast this week with Royal Homecare in Dublin on the topic of Caregiver Burnout, and I was asked an interesting question about what self care is (you can listen to it here if you like, though please excuse the poor audio quality – said mic has a funeral this week, and will be replaced).

It got me thinking – there’s a common misconception about what self care actually is.  It’s often sold to us as yoga, or green juice, or facemasks and bubble baths.  In other words, self care has become equated with wellness, and more specifically, with the wellness industry. self care is a driver to community care

This isn’t self care though.

Not to say yoga and green juice aren’t great or good for you, but real self care is the act of meeting of our physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

Real self care isn’t always pretty or comfortable.  It might be having that long held-off conversation with our partner, because we’re scared of the outcome.  It might be saying no to that project that we really want to do, because we don’t have energy right now. It might be going dancing or hiking instead of to the protest because we need something that nourishes us, even though the cause is important.

Self care also isn’t selfish – in fact, real self care should be a driver to community care.

You see, the more we practice care for ourselves, the more we are provided with the resources and energy to care for others.

We can’t pour from an empty cup – self care allows us instead to fill our cup so much that we can spill over and pour into others.

So the questions I want to leave you with this week are, what would an act of self care be for you right now?  What emotional, spiritual or physical needs are asking to be met?

And can you allow yourself the space to practice real, genuine care for yourself, knowing in the end, it’s not for you alone, but providing you the resources to go out and care for the world?

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