Career Performance & Urgency - Overcoming The Optics Forced Onto Us
We're showing up big. Being asked to solve major problems, and we have been trying to add our two cents in.
Showing up for ourselves and fitting into systems of white supremacy that make us choose between putting food on our table and caring for ourselves that feel culturally relevant is the perfectly designed dilemma of the hour.
Many of us who feel this tension will stop here and not consider the ground we have to lay for the long arc of change that is necessary to secure our ancestral lines.
Many women tell me, "well we can't change the system so we might as well not change ourselves." And so we work and work and work until we die early, fall flat on our faces, develop illnesses, and or have money but are sick well into our elder years and unable to really enjoy life.
This is not sustainable. The urgency that lives inside white supremacy systems is the urgency that is killing us.
Our surrender and acceptance of things "as they are" is nothing but a short term bandaid for a bigger dilemma around belonging and making our way slowly and strategically toward a new vision.
That kind of long term vision to reimagine your life in a broken system, takes work and community and a deeper commitment to yourself and women, where you say:
Reparations begin with me
Hustle culture is mostly cancelled. Mi amor, how often has hustling been treated like a trophy to be won? How often have you been praised for keeping busy and hustling for what you want 24/7?
Yes. I am scared AF and this urgency lifestyle isn't going to put a nail in my coffin. I deserve a deeper more meaningful life, one not tied to judgements, marionette performances and the veneer of success.
I deserve to be in deep and powerful relationship with myself, my family, my life work and my community.
The fact of it is, it’s not going to get you where you want to go.
When you hustle, you’re in constant competition. Maybe not with anyone specifically, but you’re definitely competing with YOU. At least the version of you that you believe you *have to* or *should* be.
There’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy, friendly competition. But when you’re heading towards burnout because we've been misled to believe that we should be proud of the hustle, then something’s gotta give. I’m talking about working 100+ hours, running on less than fumes...the works.
It's time we slow down. Consider who you want to be in the future and how to develop into that person. Always remember that we came from collective greatness. Always remember we don't have to morph into something we were never meant to be.
See, I started the Wild Dreams circle because I lost sight of the essential in my life. I was looking for validation of my failures and successes outside of myself. Validation from family, friends, political advocates, organizations, people I admired and I worked for all had opinions about who I am and how I could become successful in the world.
Before stepping fully into the Wild Dreams program, I was still focused on the things that made others happy. I was busy climbing that ladder of “success” like my life depended on it. And, sadly, it kind of did. With the elevation of more women into leadership roles, everything we know about what success looks like and the hustle culture attached to it is being reimagined and what’s possible is bigger than we had hoped for.
Always know we crossed bridges to be here together and to heal one another so we imagine a future for the seventh generation.
Don't go alone sisters, friends. The show is over and it will fade left slowly. Be patient, start today. So you can be ready for the future that is being born right now.
Breaking The Optics
Amor, when was the last time you found yourself saying….
👉🏽 I feel like I am running out of time and I don’t know what I want.
👉🏽I know what I want but not sure how to get to what I want without compromising my values.
👉🏽I’m deeply exhausted from spending so much time dealing with white supremacy and colonized systems.
👉🏽People don’t seem to be attracted to what I want, there is an energy I’m giving off that doesn’t align with who I am.
Has it been recently? Maybe it was in the last day or so. I get it, beauty, but there is a better way.
I am the daughter of a working-class single immigrant mother and a family of women who need additional support for as long as I can remember. I gave up my first money savings when I was 7 years old so my Abuela could have special bifocals as her vision deteriorated. This was my first reminder that we all need each other and somehow the system wasn't working for us.
You have been caught between a system held up by colonized views and your vision for freedom. You think that your freedom depends on the systems changing. But it doesn't. The system will change because you do.
There are over 1,000,000,001 visions for change coming from women and communities all over the world, and we need every single one of those visions, including yours.
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