Fighting for hope, in a hopeless world.

#TransparentTuesdays

Hi friend,

Last week I shared my theory about the underlying reason so many of us are struggling to thrive right now.

You can click here to read the whole thing, but the short version is that we’re facing the ongoing and ever-increasing buildup of “moral residue” that accompanies late stage capitalism and the digital revolution.

Essentially, witnessing endless moral violations on a daily basis (and feeling incapable of taking the actions that we believe are actually good and right) makes us feel shitty and helpless.

A lot of you seemed to really resonate with this idea, and as a coach whose whole thing is helping people remove the obstacles that prevent them from thriving, this feels deeply important and personal to me.

I keep thinking about the next steps to addressing this, and wondering what that looks like. If we have, in fact, just identified the correct problem, then what is the appropriate solution? 

Given the realities of the world we live in, what do we actually need, and what can we actually do, to address this?

If I’m being honest, my first thought is a pretty grim one: that we can’t really do anything, so unless the whole world changes, we’re pretty much fucked.

This kneejerk response is an indication of the fact that I, too, am afflicted by the heavy feeling of powerlessness and helplessness that comes from a buildup of moral residue… because I am. And it’s not really an unreasonable conclusion to come to, either. 

After all, the problem stems from the way our society is structured: the way our government and economy are entwined, the fact that billionaires are running the world, and the reality that this problem is getting rapidly worse by the day, with no end in sight. 

After all, how can we expect things to get better, or make any kind of meaningful change, when the powers that be clearly want it to be this way? 

We can vote, of course, and we can do small things like call our representatives, donate to important causes, go to protests, and talk to the people in our life about the issues. 

But even if every single one of us does those things, we’re still unlikely to see anything change anytime soon, which is why one of the core symptoms of chronic and unresolveable moral residue is feeling disempowered, helpless and hopeless.

These feelings are a big part of the problem, because we simply cannot thrive without a sense of our own self-efficacy, agency, and empowerment. Thriving simply cannot coexist with the feeling that we are small and powerless.

But is it possible to feel differently, without changing our circumstances? Is it possible to reclaim our own feelings of self-efficacy, agency, and empowerment, even when the world is actively fighting to strip us of them?

I think the answer is YES. And not only do I think this is possible, but I also think it’s actually crucial.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that we stop fighting to change our circumstances, or correct the injustices that we are seeing in the world. In fact, quite the opposite! After all, research shows that people who have a strong and positive sense of themselves as moral beings (and who are connected to their own power and agency) are far more likely to both care about injustices when they see them, and to effectively and consistently do what’s needed to set them right!

So we must keep fighting to set things right, and we will keep fighting for a world in which moral violations are rare (and prompt immediate collective action), rather than being something that is constant, inescapable, and something we all just have to tolerate. But we’ll never get there if we let our circumstances make us feel disempowered, helpless, and hopeless. 

Plus, fixing the world is likely to take a long time, and I refuse to believe we have to wait for that to happen before we can thrive as individuals.

I actually see this issue as being very similar to body image issues. 

When I first started working with people who were struggling with body image issues, they would often tell me that the only possible solution to their insecurities was for society to stop caring so much about how people looked. 

And like, obviously, yeah, that would be a pretty effective solution. If we could wave a magic wand and make it so that all of society was accepting of people no matter how they looked, the vast majority of body image issues would be immediately “solved.” And as a body image coach, I’m extremely invested in working toward those changes on a society level! I don't necessarily expect to see it happen in my lifetime, but by pushing back against diet culture, beauty ideals, traditional gender roles, body-based discrimination, and patriarchy in my work, I’m doing everything I can to help society shift in the right direction!

That said, I also know that fixing these issues at a societal level is not the only solution to body image issues. 

Over the many years I’ve been doing this work, I’ve personally helped hundreds of people overcome their food and body image issues through body neutrality, despite the fact that society hasn’t changed. So I know that while it might not be easy, it is possible to find peace, acceptance, and a feeling of worthiness (no matter how we look), without having fixed the society issues that made us feel bad in the first place. 

If society got on board with body liberation and justice, then body neutrality would be a hell of a lot easier, and the majority of body image issues simply wouldn’t develop in the first place. But we absolutely can thrive in our own skin, without that happening. 

I think the same thing is true when it comes to the burden of chronic and unresolveable moral residue. 

I want society to change, and I don’t want people to have to carry this heavy burden of both witnessing and participating in moral violations on a daily basis. But I believe we absolutely can find new ways of relating to this burden, that allow us to still thrive as individuals in the meantime.

Over the last few months, as I’ve been obsessively thinking about and researching this topic, I’ve been reviewing everything I know about neuropsychobiology, and brainstorming about which tools, skills, actions, or mindset changes might be most valuable and productive in addressing this issue.

It’s clear to me that this journey will be a lot of work, and that there is still a lot to figure out, but so far I’ve come up with a few core components or “strategies” that I think most of us will need to do, if our goal is to reclaim our power and thrive in a world that doesn’t support our moral wellbeing. 

1. Grieving, and keeping our hearts soft and open.

   The situation we’re in (and the state of the world right now) is overwhelmingly heartbreaking, and the sheer volume of moral dilemmas and violations that we are forced to either bear witness to or participate in often just feels like too much to bear. To protect ourselves from this heartbreak, we tend to start disconnecting (consciously or unconsciously) from our emotions, and from those deeply tender and vulnerable parts of ourselves. By closing our hearts to the pain we remain functional day to day, but it comes at much too high a cost to our identity, mental health, and ability to thrive. In order to reclaim those parts of ourselves and bloom again, we will need to first let our hearts break, and learn to really sit with that pain. For most people, this will mean learning how to more skillfully navigate grief, increasing their “distress tolerance” around uncomfortable feelings, and cultivating a practice of mindful embodiment.

   
   

2. Empowerment.

   While it’s true that a lot of life is outside of our control, our feeling of being helpless is often an illusion— it’s a story that we’ve learned to tell ourselves, about how we don’t have the power to make a bad situation better, or that our actions won’t make a difference. This belief then influences our actions, making us far more likely to do nothing (even when action actually would improve things), which then just reinforces the story that we’re trapped and nothing we do matters, and keeps us in a state of depressed energy, motivation, and mental health. Luckily though, this is a cycle we can break out of, by addressing our beliefs, filling our lives with relationships and communities who support our empowerment, and cultivating a sense of our own empowerment, agency, and self-efficacy through practice and experience.

   
   

3. Consciously cultivating a strong and positive “moral identity.”

   Your “moral identity” describes the sense you have of yourself as a moral being, encompassing your beliefs about right and wrong, how well you feel you live up to those values, and how important it is to you to be a moral person in general. Your moral identity is subjective and personal—similar to your “body image,” but around your integrity, values, and moral code, rather than how you look—and just like body image, it can have a huge impact on your confidence, your relationships, and your life! Thriving as an individual requires a healthy, strong, positive, and resilient moral identity, and people who have that are also far more likely to exhibit “moral behaviors,” so this is extremely important. In a world where we are constantly forced to compromise our values and moral code just to survive, this can be difficult, but it is possible. And don’t get it twisted, this isn’t just about “choosing better,” or trying harder to “be more moral.” This step may require changing your actions, but probably not in the way you think. For most people, cultivating a strong and positive moral identity will mean doing courageous self-inquiry to discover their actual authentic values and morals, dismantling false and oppressive beliefs about their value or “goodness,” improving their ability to do effective repair work when they’ve hurt someone or messed up, and practicing self-compassion and self-forgiveness around compromises and mistakes.

What do you think about all this?

Do you agree with me that there has to be a way for us to overcome the burden of moral residue and thrive despite society not changing, or does that still feel like science fiction? And if it is true, what do you think about the potential effectiveness of these strategies to get there?

I’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to leave me a comment and share your thoughts. 

What do you think we actually need right now, if we are to reclaim our right to thrive, in spite of the world we’re currently living in? What do you think would help us feel whole, safe, present, embodied, and empowered again, in this environment?

I think addressing the epidemic of moral residue is so important… maybe even the most important thing we can be thinking about right now. 

This is both because we as individuals all deserve to feel safe, whole, worthy, and at peace with ourselves… and also because we must find a way to push back against the fatigue, apathy, despair, withdrawal, and paralysis that chronic unresolved moral residue generates, if we are to stand any chance of staying in the fight long enough to actually make things better. 

To that end, I’ve been considering putting together a small coaching group for people who want to beta-test some of these ideas together, and explore what it really takes to reclaim hope and safety, feel empowered, repair your moral identity, and reconnect with a state of expansiveness, presence, and aliveness… all while simultaneously witnessing (and being forced to participate in) a constant stream of immorality and injustice on a daily basis. 

So if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, please leave me a comment and let me know! 

Either way, thank you for being here.

Big hug,

Jessi