Hiyaa! I’m so excited to begin the Emergent Strategy blog series to provide strategies, tips and practices you can implement to build a more liberated life. What you will come to know about me is that I love taking something conceptual like values or theory and applying what they could look like in our everyday life.

If you’d like to read more about how I found Emergent Strategy and began applying it to my life, you can start with this blog post: What is Emergent Strategy?

This blog series will serve as a window into how I am engaging in my Emergent Strategist practice as a Coach, facilitator and radical social worker. 

WHAT IS EMERGENT STRATEGY?

adrienne describes Emergent Strategy as “how we shape and generate complex systems and patterns through our own relatively simple interactions”. Another way to put it is that this framework is about how we get in right relationship with change as something we can move with, shape and sustain. My intention here is to reference and break down each of the Emergent Strategy Principles as a way to help us move towards more concrete practices and skills. To give you a sense of where we will go, below is an image of the Emergent Strategy Principles. 

PRINCIPLE: SMALL IS GOOD, SMALL IS ALL. (THE LARGE IS A REFLECTION OF THE SMALL).

adrienne declares that ‘how we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale’. Consider that for a second. If this is true, it would mean that for those of us who dream and scheme to make species lengthening, transformative change will need to examine our everyday actions, rituals and ways of being. The idea is that our incremental choices have the ability to accumulate to the larger, more systemic changes that we’d like to see in the world.

Personally, this brings me a lot of hope especially since resisting interlocking, multi-layered systems of supremacy and conditioning day in and day out is overwhelming, exhausting, and oftentimes heart-breaking. On the other side, this work helps you see the humanity in yourself and others, moves you to meet the moment in centering the most marginalized, and encourages you to tap into your joy, agency and community. Can you imagine how our systems, institutions or policies would shift if these small choices were to ripple out on a mass scale?

As a Coach, I’d love to work with you to brainstorm how you might live into this value. In the meantime, I’ll give you some ideas about how you might practice this principle. Feel free to consider what is useful and leave the rest.

SELF: How does this principle show up in how I relate to myself?

🖤Check-in on yourself: do you remember that thread that was going around saying to check-in on your strong friend? Do that, whether or not you are the strong friend. Capitalism would love it if we just kept our head down, forget that we were human beings not human doings and push aside our discomfort or exhaustion, so fuck that. Let’s check-in. To begin, slow down, take a moment to drop into your body and see if you can feel any sensations or tension in your body. At this stage, we just want to increase our awareness and start getting familiar with what we’re feeling.

🖤Do something that you actually want to do, just for you: in a world where there are many things that are out of our control, one way to counteract this is by remembering and acting on the fact that we each have some level of agency and choice. This can look like taking a nap or ordering delivery or having a dance party or saying no or re-watching your favorite series or movie. Whatever it might be for you, see if you can do a thing on a regular basis. I wonder what might change for you if you started doing more of the things that actually lit you up. 

FAMILY & FRIENDS: How does this principle show up with my family and friends?

🖤Seek intimacy: as an introvert, what fills me up the most is developing closeness in my relationships. One thing that has been helpful in my partnership is learning more about our Five Love Languages as a way to understand how we might deepen our intimacy. One of the love languages that we have in common is Quality Time so the way we build intimacy involves watching our favorite shows, playing board games or deepening our connection with thought-provoking card games.

🖤Seek consent: as a Coach, I’m real big on asking for permission before sharing a suggestion. I’m not someone who wants to give unsolicited advice and my intention is not to dump on people. This can look like asking ‘can I share my opinion, I’m not sure if you would agree’ or ‘is it okay if I share about this thing that just happened’. Doing so, allows the other person a minute to gut check and assess what their capacity or desires are. Maybe this is something you’d like others to do with you more often. 

WORK: How does this principle show up in my work and with colleagues?

🖤#Less: Since the panini, my catch phrase has become #Less because I think that the world we live in encourages our attention to be all over the place. I’m not into it. I trust myself to do what needs to be done without over-committing myself every step of the way. This can look like blocking off time for more spaciousness or rearranging your schedule to meet your energy waves or if you’re a supervisor responsible for other people’s work, checking-in around whether timelines or expectations are still feasible at a human’s pace. (Note: in order for that last one to really work, you would need to already be cultivating a space where folx can share challenges freely without fear or hesitation. If this is something you’d like support with, I’d love to be on your team!)

🖤Make requests: if you’re not in a place where you have the authority to make these kinds of decisions, practice making requests. My beloved has taught me to always ask because as she tells it, ‘ ask a question because you can only get a yes or a no and sometimes you get a no but most of the time, you get a yes’. I have come to believe these stats from my own experience. A request can sound like ‘could you help clarify this thing?’ or ‘could we move this meeting?’ or ‘is it okay if I give this to you in a week instead?’ or ‘does this need to happen today?’

That’s all I got for today. Hope this was helpful! You can check out the next blog post: Emergent Strategy: How to Build Trust?

NEXT STEP: If you’re curious about what a-ha’s or practices might come up for you, you can sign up for my A Daily Practice workbook below.

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