Shawn Ginwright Transcript
Shawn Ginwright 0:00
Those of us who work to create a better society and improve our communities, because the issues of oppression are so acute and because the issues of suffering are so urgent, that we haven't given ourselves permission or space to use all of the tools of social change that are available to us.
Omkari Williams 0:42
Hello, and welcome to Stepping Into Truth, the podcast where we have conversations on social justice and how we all get free. I'm your host Omkari Williams, and I'm really happy that you're here with me today. Over my years of coaching people who want to make the world a better place, one of the things I've noticed is that a lot of people feel like activism might just be for people who are famous. But I'm here to tell you that that is not the case. We need all hands on deck, we need the contribution that you can make. And I hope that these podcast episodes inspire you to step out and find your way of making a difference in the world.
Omkari Williams 1:20
My guest today is Shawn Ginwright, PhD. Shawn is one of the nation's leading innovators, provocateurs, and thought leaders on African American youth, youth activism, and youth development. He's the founder and CEO of Flourish Agenda Incorporated, a national nonprofit consulting firm that design strategies to unlock the power of healing and engage youth of color and adult allies in transforming their schools and communities. He is Professor of Education in the Africana Studies department and Senior Research Associate at San Francisco State University. And he is the author of The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. I am very pleased to welcome Shawn to the podcast. Hi Shawn, how are you today?
Shawn Ginwright 2:08
I am doing great. How are you?
Omkari Williams 2:10
I am doing really well. I'm so looking forward to this conversation because there are so many points of intersection between what you believe and what I believe. So basically, it's just going to be a big love fest, I think.
Shawn Ginwright 2:25
There's nothing wrong with that.
Omkari Williams 2:26
Nothing, especially these days. So let me start with this. In your book, The Four Pivots, one of the things that you talk about repeatedly is the necessity of determining not just what we're against, but what we are for. And much of my focus is on how we create the world that we want to live in. And that this shift in attention to what we are for is actually something I talk about a lot in my Activism 101 trainings. And I think it's so important. And it's not to say that what we're against is unimportant — but I think what we are for is ultimately far more motivating. So I'd like to start by talking about that for a bit. Tell me why you put so much attention on what we are for.
Shawn Ginwright 3:10
Yeah, I mean, I think if I look back at my own sort of activist training and work to create justice in communities, that most of my training has really been about challenging, changing, resisting, confronting issues of oppression that shaped the lives of reality that creates suffering for communities. So I think that that body of work is necessary and important. But I also came to a point to sort of realize that the deconstruction, or the elimination of suffering, is not the same thing as the creation of joy.
Omkari Williams 3:49
Yes.
Shawn Ginwright 3:49
I come to realize that the eradication of oppression is not the same thing as relishing and togetherness and belonging. And I think a lot of times those of us who work to create a better society, improve our communities, because the issues of oppression are so acute. And because the issues of suffering are so urgent, that we haven't given ourselves permission or space, to use all of the tools of social change that are available to us. And so oppression has in many ways defined our response to it.
Shawn Ginwright 4:32
And oppression, it's predefined our response to it. And that means that oppression and suffering in many ways says that you don't have the permission to dream, all you have to do is fight, resist, confront me. And as a result of that, we haven't oftentimes cultivated collectively, a radical imagination of what we really want. And this comes from our history right?
Shawn Ginwright 4:59
My wife and spouse says that if Africans who were enslaved, didn't dream of freedom, they would have wanted or fought for a better form of slavery, right. But it was the dream of freedom and the imagination of emancipation, that drove that body of work. And so I think for us, we also have the responsibility to use all of the tools at our disposal. And so the other side of that equation is dreaming, is imagination is really seeing what we want, as opposed to only what we want to eradicate. Both of those, I think, importantly, necessary.
Omkari Williams 5:38
So, what I'm hearing you say is that you believe justice cannot be separated from healing, essentially. Is that okay? Am I accurate?
Shawn Ginwright 5:38
Absolutely .
Omkari Williams 5:52
Perfect. So then let's talk about why you feel those two things are inextricably linked.
Shawn Ginwright 5:58
Because when we think about justice, we think about the structural requirements for living a full life. And we think about the institutional arrangements that allow folks to have opportunities. But we also know, from the research and from my own work, that you can change the structures, which are a necessary prerequisite for flourishing life, but they're not the full equation. And so what injustice does is that it harms, it's a moral injury to people and communities. And if you open up opportunities, it doesn't mean that that injury, that moral and ethical injury to people, communities, families and individuals, doesn't mean that that's automatically healed. And so healing is a fundamental part of justice, because it suggests that people who have been harmed, injured, and suffering have the right to be well. It's a right to be well.
Shawn Ginwright 7:04
I say that the most radical act of justice we can engage in is care. The most radical act of justice we can engage in is claiming our individual and collective well being. And so when we bring these two things together, structural changes that are intertwined with our own individual healing journeys, that is what creates a pathway to justice. And I think that justice, I don't know if justice is actually the end result.
Shawn Ginwright 7:31
I think justice is a pathway to flourishing. Justice is the pathway to thriving, right? And so if we only focus on justice as the outcome, I'm not so sure that we have thought through the result of that, right. We want flourishing lives. We want lives that are full of thriving families and communities, not just existing. Right? And so I say that because sometimes I think we talk about justice as an outcome. We don't actually lean into, well, what is that producing for our communities? And what is that producing for our families?
Omkari Williams 8:17
It's interesting that you say that, because what I think of when I hear you talk about flourishing, is how small sometimes our goals are. That our goals get circumscribed by the things that seem possible, you know, and the incremental steps. And that part of our job is to dream. Part of our job is to envision a world that is so radically different than the one we're living in right now that it can be hard to do that, it can feel like, Oh, well, that's a fool's dream. And we're just gonna go for these steps here, because these steps here will make a difference. And yes, they will. But in service of what ultimately becomes the question.
Shawn Ginwright 9:05
And that's the hard work.
Omkari Williams 9:08
It's very hard work.
Shawn Ginwright 9:09
That's the hard work that we have to do. And it's hard to do that when there is so much suffering. It's hard to imagine and dream and think about flourishing and well being when the families and communities you care about are living on the streets, right? The urgency of suffering requires our immediate attention and the hard work of envisioning another alternative.
Omkari Williams 9:34
And that's the challenge, partly because, and you referenced this in your book, our quick fix society. We have this idea of things happening in a certain timeframe. And yet the truth of it is, I think, to actually achieve our overarching goals, we have to be willing to accept that we aren't going to see those goals come to fruition.
Shawn Ginwright 9:58
Yeah, that's a tough idea. A lot of pushback on this from particularly from millennial folks. I don't remember which chapter I talked about a story someone shared with me about building a cathedral. And the reference was essentially that a cathedral will take, you know, a cathedral is a magnificent architecture work of art that can take anywhere up to 5000 years to complete from, from day one to the end. And the story was that, you know, what type of mindset, what type of dedication does it take to know that your toil, your work your labor, that your children won't even see the grandeur of what you're building? Right.
Shawn Ginwright 10:41
But that your ongoing persistence, and the imagination of what you're building will one day be complete. And his suggestion in that story was that sometimes we need to have a cathedral building mindset, right. Our cathedral building, that we're not, we're not building houses or shacks, or buildings that will be around for just 20 years, but a cathedral and the kind of effort that it took for those builders, those masons, those architects to go in, day in and day out for their entire lives, knowing that their children wouldn't even see it is the kinds of, I think, shifts that we also have to integrate into some of our work.
Omkari Williams 11:19
So how do you propose we do that?
Shawn Ginwright 11:22
(Laughter) It's a good question. It's a great question. You know, I try to always avoid either ORs. Right. And that means that either or, like we have to respond urgently or we have to have a cathedral mindset. I think we have to have both. And what that looks like is that it means that we have to not turn our blinds eye to urgent suffering, right. Yet, at the same time, we have to hold the space to imagine something entirely different.
Shawn Ginwright 11:51
Let me give you a really concrete example. I was working with a group of African American teachers here in Oakland, California that were really struggling with microaggressions and racism in their schools. There were challenges with the students that they had in their classrooms. And they came to me and asked for some curriculum and some training about how they could actually better support as a group of about 20 teachers. And so rather than sort of training these teachers on curriculum and ethnic studies, we decided to take them on a retreat, where all we did for half the time was play.
Shawn Ginwright 12:26
We had Lego logs, we had blocks, we had big, you know, big balloons that they rolled around. And all we asked them to do was play. And then at the end of the day, we talked about what that was like, what that felt like. And what occurred was that those teachers needed respite space. They needed to have the permission to exercise a part of their being that had not been cultivated and nurtured in their work. And so that weekend was so powerful that they met every month after that for about a year to continue to build and cultivate that space, that dreaming, that well being space that hadn't been addressed. So it was both responding to the urgent crisis of these teachers, but also by creating this sort of sanctuary space. It was holding both of those tensions at the same time. Maybe that wasn't a good example.
Omkari Williams 13:18
No, that's a beautiful example. Because it also speaks to, I think, how desperately most of us need to rest. And how stressed and incapable of really seriously appropriately responding because we are tired and stressed, we are at this point in time in particular. And that makes me actually think of a theme that runs through your book, which is the difference between what we need to do and who we need to be in order to create the changes that we are seeking. And for most of us in this culture, doing is way easier than being we celebrate doers. You know, it's like how much did you get done? How busy are you? I would love to hear you talk about why we need to shift from, or to use your language, to pivot our attention from doing to being.
Shawn Ginwright 14:19
Yeah, great question. I love how you rephrase that. Had I heard that phrase, from doing to being, I think I would have renamed the book. (laughter) Beautiful how you eloquently summarized the book. From doing to being. I think we live in a "do" culture and in the "do" culture we're rewarded for doing. We are. It's a meritocratic society where you know, the more you do supposedly the more you get. And in our work for justice doing is necessary and required, right. We have to do things to create opportunities, confront and address systems and structures that make it difficult for, for communities. But we haven't enough created the being space.
Shawn Ginwright 15:09
The being space is, one of the interviews in the book, you know, he says that I'm not sure if my present self can create the world that I see. So I have to be something else to create that. And this means that without the inner exploration of our own traumas, our own harm, without that inter journey exploration, it assumes that we can create the thing we want, with our present selves, the present version of ourselves. And it presumes that that our traumas are irrelevant, that our healing is insignificant.
Shawn Ginwright 15:46
It presumes that if we don't change, it presumes that our present selves can produce something else. And so your comment around doing and being means that, I think, when we engage in who we should be and who we want to become, what type of person do I want to become? That question forces us to, in some ways, answer it. One, it says who I am now, I may need to make some changes. Two, it's future goal oriented. And three, gives us agency and choice, right? That question does so much for our well being.
Shawn Ginwright 16:22
And so part of our work, for those of us who are engaging in activism and justice work, I think, is to create the space to ask ourselves that question, Who do I want to become? How do I get there, right, that allows us to balance the sort of over emphasis on what we do, and encourages us to engage in the inner journey. And again, these are not new concepts, right? These are concepts that come from the Black church, from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from Dr. King, it comes from Gandhi. These are not new concepts. It's just that I'm hoping that I'm taking these concepts and making them relevant for the major, major issues that we have today in North America in the Western world.
Omkari Williams 17:11
Well, you know, they always say there's nothing new under the sun. And that is true, the point is to take the wisdom that is under the sun and apply it to the challenges that we are facing right now. And I think that when I look around, I see how hard it is to focus on the being, because the doing is so in our face.
Shawn Ginwright 17:35
Yeah.
Omkari Williams 17:35
And the being feels like something that we can attend to later. And that is backwards. We really have to deal with the being in order to direct us in a healthy productive way towards the doing. If we don't know who we want to be, how do we really know what we need to do? And so I think we're not asking the questions in the right way. And when I was reading your book, you talked about hindsight, foresight, and insight, as the three sights that you say we need to bring forth in order to create the change we wish to see. And I would love for you to talk about those three sights in that context of who do we want to be? So hindsight, foresight, and insight.
Shawn Ginwright 18:23
Great question. I don't want to take credit for that. That came from a quote from Ruby Sales, who was on a podcast by Krista Tippett. So I want to make sure to give Sales credit for that wonderful metaphor. So most of the time, I think we spend ourselves, we spend time with either hindsight or foresight. In other words, we're always thinking about the past, this thing that happened to me, this thing that I did before, I should have said this.
Shawn Ginwright 18:53
But hindsight is not just sort of living in the past, hindsight is intentionally trying to learn from what I was and what occurred. Hindsight, is not just regurgitating the experience, but it's really trying to pull out the nuggets of the lessons from some of the biggest mistakes. I share a story where I was working with a group of Black college students here in Oakland to work with a group of children throughout the city, and their organization ran out of money. And that story, as I reflect back on it, in terms of hindsight, really taught me that it's better to always tell the truth, even if the stuff hurts, right? So hindsight is really trying to lean into the lessons that are from our past, and then apply them into our foresight, which is future right.
Shawn Ginwright 18:53
Foresight is also asking the question of who do I want to become? What will it take to get me there? But also, what am I fighting for? What Am I creating? And so foresight is really ability to kind of think about those lessons and apply them to our future selves. But those two activities are only good for what Ruby Sales calls, "Insight". And so we use hindsight and foresight to develop a sense of insight about stuff that's happening right now, about challenges that we're experiencing right now. For example, right now, we are experiencing, in many ways a psychic civil war in this country, right.
Omkari Williams 20:35
Yes.
Shawn Ginwright 20:35
We're not fighting with, you know, with bullets, but it is an ideological division that is at least the most significant in my lifetime. So what is the insight from that? Like, what do we do? You know, hindsight says, I'm right, this is the way to go. Foresight tells us if we get the next president and have Congress and Senate to be progressive, then we win, right? But insight tells us something different, right. And the insight says that there has to be a different path, that we have to figure out another way. But we have to use both hindsight and insight, or hindsight and foresight to really cultivate what's happening now. Right? It's an insight about how we should move our organizations and our work and ourselves. Easier said than done.
Omkari Williams 21:24
Way easier said than done. And I think it's really interesting, because I think that what we come up against, in bringing hindsight and foresight into insight, is time. And the time to reflect and the time to consider things because there's so much hurry, hurry, hurry. And these are not fast things. And these are not things that we can say, okay, yeah, I've got all of this covered, because I've been thinking about it for 20 minutes. I mean, these are deep conversations, again, in a quick fix world. So maintaining that ability to have those deep conversations is really challenging right now, people want instant solutions. And these are not problems that are going to be resolved by instant solutions. That's just not going to happen.
Shawn Ginwright 22:20
Yeah, the quick fix, do culture, right, which is a result of our capitalist economy, that wants solutions and fixes that reproduce the capitalist economy, right. And so the culture that the capitalist economy spins off, that we all digest is time. And how we use time, and time is money, and the efficiency of the capitalist culture that doesn't provide the primacy of time, right. And so, I mean, there are ways I mean, I think that, you know, I always tell my son who's just finished college, "you know I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to do that". And I told him, if someone said, they'll give you a million dollars, if you did x, really simple, like clean your room or whatever, would you do it? And he said, Yeah, I would do it immediately. And so automatically, time is a function of priority.
Omkari Williams 23:22
Yes.
Shawn Ginwright 23:23
It really is a function of priority. It's not a function of, you know, a 24 hour, it is a 24 hour day, but we created a construct. But when things happen, I know that you know, me and my wife had a health scare. Anyone who's had a health issue that they had to face and think about life and death, you know, that immediately how you thought of time changed. Immediately. Now the construct stayed the same, but you changed the priority of who you're going to spend time with. You changed the priority of where you're going to be, but nothing else changed. But you because you're dealing with a limited amount of time, if you really faced and had to grapple with issues of death.
Omkari Williams 24:08
Yes.
Shawn Ginwright 24:08
We don't have to grapple with death to cleanse ourselves of how we're thinking of time.
Omkari Williams 24:15
And I actually believe that part of the reason we get stuck in this time trap is because it allows capitalist ideas to perpetuate themselves. If we're paying attention to doing and producing over more thoughtful conversations, then we don't actually address the underlying structural inequities that are created by the system. We're too busy sort of being mice on that wheel to actually be paying attention to the fact that we are mice on the wheel, we're not noticing that.
Shawn Ginwright 24:55
Absolutely. It blinds us right?
Omkari Williams 24:58
Yeah.
Shawn Ginwright 24:58
And that's actually intentional, right?
Omkari Williams 25:00
It is intentional.
Shawn Ginwright 25:01
It's part of the reproduction of structural inequality and the reproduction of capitalist culture.
Omkari Williams 25:07
Yeah. It completely is.
Shawn Ginwright 25:09
And you know, this, this idea is, is unique to the Western world, there are many cultures that think of time, and you know, just think of the concept of a siesta
Omkari Williams 25:20
Yeah.
Shawn Ginwright 25:21
that changes how people prioritize family, friends, and time. And so you know, this call, on us to rethink time is a pretty radical idea, right? Because the do culture tells us that time is, you know, we have to use time in a particular way to get things done and do culture. But ultimately, it is not healthy for us. And that's what I want people to think about, that even if you are using time efficiently, it's not healthy for our psycho-spiritual well being, it's not healthy for our physical bodies. It's not healthy for movements. It's not healthy for how we think about our organizations.
Shawn Ginwright 26:03
I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a large organization, really smart people. And part of what they were trying to figure out is that in the last pivot it's called a pivot from hustle to flow. And they said, You know, I use kind of defined frenzy, and they're like, We work in a culture of frenzy, where we're always doing things, and we don't know how to get out of it, right, which is how they're thinking about time. And so these are fundamental questions that I think once we at least ask ourselves, we will be able to at least pivot or work in another direction.
Omkari Williams 26:38
These are really radical changes that you're suggesting. Radical in the sense of, they would really upend the structure as it currently exists. And that is, in my opinion, a lot of what is necessary. And it's really challenging because we humans are creatures of habit, we like things the way we've always done them. But one of the things that I appreciate about the work that you do is how you use story, and storytelling and truth, to actually start shifting some of those ingrained beliefs about how things have to be. Would you speak to how story and storytelling and truth telling makes such a difference in our work towards healing?
Shawn Ginwright 27:31
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as human beings, why we are essentially moved by stories, and most of my work as an academic was anti story, right? It really focused on research. And so my friends and my brothers who haven't really read anything I've wrote, because it's academic pushed me to sort of think about how do you write in a way that is compelling enough to get people to think differently. And so story was my sort of pathway to do that.
Shawn Ginwright 28:05
And I essentially sort of thought about the lessons that I have, stories that I've experienced, that got me to think differently about life, right? A story, where I talk about my wife and daughter, were headed to Los Angeles, and were rushing out of the house, and they got in a Uber. And the Lyft driver didn't say hi, right, we have a sign in our front yard that says Black Lives Matter, Science is real. We have very progressive signs in our front yards and this was a white man in his 60s. And my wife immediately assumed, like, wow, he saw the sign in my front yard, and he's driving two Black women, he must be furious. So she said, "Hey, how you doing?". He still didn't say anything. And she said, Wow, this guy's really not going to speak to us, right? And then she said, "It's a nice day, isn't it?". He still didn't turn around and say anything. And she was like, forget this, she was getting ready to ask him to pull over. She turned to my daughter said, "Hey, do you see what he's doing? He's ignored us". And my daughter said, "No, he's not ignoring us Mom, don't you see this sign?". It's a sign in the backseat that says driver is deaf. Now, that was a story. But it was a story that when she shared it with me was about perspective. And she had to do some reflection about, you know, well, maybe she's experienced this in the past. And that was a wound of how she was treated by older white men. But she also had to wrestle with the question about her assumptions, right? And so there was so much richness in stories that I sort of present it without judgment, but just tell the story and try to allow the reader to to sort of make their own or develop their own questions right and see themselves in the human experience that happens to us, you know, happens to all of us.
Omkari Williams 30:02
A friend of mine, the writer, Patti Digh says that story is the shortest distance between two people. And, yeah, it's one of my favorite quotes because it is so profoundly true. And when we can connect to that truth then we don't make assumptions in the same way, we start to be curious, rather than making assumptions. And curiosity, I feel like, if we could just be curious about each other, we would heal the world so quickly, because curiosity is such a great gateway into our humanity.
Shawn Ginwright 30:39
Yeah.
Omkari Williams 30:40
It's just so important. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
Shawn Ginwright 30:42
No, I was gonna say and that's, you know, that's what story does, right? It's sort of a portal to our humanity. When you see yourself like, oh, you know, I had a similar situation, or, you know, I felt that way before the story. The story cuts to the chase, so to speak about our human condition, right, we all experience fear, uncertainty, shame, embarrassment, happiness. And story allows for people to connect with those elements of our humanity that research doesn't always do, journalism doesn't always do. But you know, you know, a story well told can really, really, I think, connect people in powerful ways.
Omkari Williams 31:28
Absolutely. I could not agree more. Our time is getting short, so I want to talk about a couple of things. One is that, I want to tell you that I think my favorite chapter in your book is the one on belonging. And it's beautiful. And I would love for you to talk about how belonging and justice are connected.
Shawn Ginwright 31:49
Yeah, belonging is a really, I think, an important concept, particularly now. And belonging is really this idea that it really just suggests that how do I act in a way where I see your humanity, even if you refuse to see my own? Now, that is really hard.
Omkari Williams 32:18
That is really hard.
Shawn Ginwright 32:19
It is really hard. But I am not asking for easy solutions either, right? So belonging is this way that we have to develop a set of eyes that can pierce through the frailties, the thin veneer of ego, those ways that continue to separate and just say that you still belong to this human condition. There's a story I tell, I don't know if it was that chapter. But I was sort of like, I got to put this to the test. And this is a self proclaimed white nationalist that I happen to know who I went to high school with. And I wanted to reach out to him. He spews racist, sexist language on Facebook all the time, I blocked him. And my friends encouraged me to reach out to him for this book. And I reached out to him and we did an interview.
Shawn Ginwright 33:16
And like I expected, he went into a whole narrative about Black people. And they're lazy, and, you know, my best friends is Black, but he doesn't do all that stuff. Then I asked him to share a story with me about a time he felt vulnerable. He shared this powerful story about his daughter when she was born, was born with our heart outside of her body, and they thought they were going to lose her. And he really was emotional when he shared that story with me. And he had a vehement dislike, he called Nancy Pelosi evil or something like that. So as he got to the end of the story, I asked him, I'm gonna say, if Nancy Pelosi had a granddaughter with the same condition as your daughter, how would you see her? And he paused. And he said that I would have to have some compassion for her because to deny that for her would mean I'd have to deny the shit that I went through.
Omkari Williams 34:08
Exactly.
Shawn Ginwright 34:09
And it wasn't like, Oh, now a kumbaya moment. And I'm not suggesting that. But it was a moment of belonging.
Omkari Williams 34:16
Yes.
Shawn Ginwright 34:16
The moment that I have the capacity to see the humanity even in those that don't see the humanity in myself. And you know, he's not going to change his political views. I'm not going to change mine. But there was a space of possibility. And that's, that's what belonging is, is how do we create that space of possibility? That rupture in our static ways that we're thinking about humanity that allow us to at least begin a humane journey with each other? And I think that that was a space, at least for me, and I hope for him that could be possibly a direction that we should be exploring.
Omkari Williams 34:54
I think what I particularly love about that story is that it points towards possibilities in incremental ways, rather than in these huge life changing ways. I mean, huge life changing is lovely. But that's not how things normally happen. And I don't think we give enough importance, enough credence to the power of incremental change in the sense that when you add up all the incremental changes, those are the things that create the massive shift. And I just think it's important that we, we recognize that because if we put aside the incremental change, then we are not allowing people to belong, we are not allowing for their humanity, we are not really allowing for the possibility of our own humanity being more expansive than we might think of it as. So I think that that's just tremendously important in a society that basically says "go big or go home".
Shawn Ginwright 35:54
Yes.
Omkari Williams 35:54
You know, we need those incremental changes that lead us to the big change we're seeking.
Shawn Ginwright 36:01
In the 70s, they invented this thing called recycling.
Omkari Williams 36:04
Yes.
Shawn Ginwright 36:05
And you take your trash, and you place it not in the trash, but you put it in the recycle. Now, that's just a very incremental decision that you make that day in and day out, it changes. But guess what, when everybody does it, it actually creates a healthier environment for the Earth.
Omkari Williams 36:22
It does. It does.
Shawn Ginwright 36:23
And it's a small act.
Omkari Williams 36:24
It is.
Shawn Ginwright 36:24
I think it's the same suggestion I'm making about these pivots, that these small pivots, practiced over time, collectively can have a significant collective impact on our world, in the world that we want to create. And it's possible because, you know, when you get off of this podcast, you're gonna get a bottle of water, you're gonna drink it, and you're not gonna throw it in the trash, you're gonna put it in a recycler. So this example of recycling, to me is perhaps one of the most close examples of when, when we make small decisions on a consistent basis, collectively, we have a significant impact on our world.
Omkari Williams 37:01
And it also speaks to the power of the collective in a society that celebrates individualism. But we don't ever make big changes by ourselves. Big changes are always a result of the collective. And I think we need to keep that in mind so that we keep making the small changes, and having them accumulate as part of the collective.
Shawn Ginwright 37:26
That's right.
Omkari Williams 37:27
So I ask my guests to come with three things that people who want to make an impact in whatever realm they can, can do. So as you look at your book, The Four Pivots, and you think about the work that you are doing in the world, and how people who are interested in this work can be of support, what are the three things, the three suggestions that you have for them?
Shawn Ginwright 37:55
That's a good question. I've thought about this, I think the first one is sort of kind of relates to the mirror work, right. And that mirror work is self reflection. So the first would be, you know, every night before you go to bed, do an emotional map, just before you go to sleep, write down the number of emotions, you experienced that day, happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, right, and put a plus on the the emotions that made you feel good. And the ones that made you feel not so good, it could just be five, it doesn't have to be a big deal. But what we're doing is we are intentionally creating a space from what happened today, and our reflection on it. And then over time, you should be able to look at your emotional maps over time and say, Wow, I got a lot of negative emotions here, right? Or I have a number of positive emotions, but it gives us the space to reflect on who we are our lives and how we actually want to show up. Sometimes we don't do enough of that.
Shawn Ginwright 39:00
Second, ask yourself, Where am I going? This is what our earlier conversation, where am I going? What is it going to take me to get there? As opposed to I don't like this, I'm going to you know, do something else. This is a question about who do I want to become? Where am I going? And then write it down? Like literally playing with the idea of who you want to become, and begin to develop that sort of future thinking about yourself about your family, community and society.
Shawn Ginwright 39:29
Third, do these things in community, right? Practice your emotional map, practice the question of who am I? Where am I going? Or who do I want to become in community? It could be simply a group of three or four people who are reading The Four Pivots. It could be a group of five or six of your friends, but do it in community because the Western way of thinking about healing is individualistic. But we also know that from our history, our ancestors and our indigeneity that healing is a collective process, that if I'm sick, we sick. And if I'm well, we well. So community is not just an efficient way to have conversation. But being in community facilitates well being. And when we're in community, when we're in community asking ourselves these kinds of questions about our emotional maps, asking questions about who do I want to become, wow, that's a really powerful elixir for our own well being. So those are three things that I hope folks can lean into that.
Omkari Williams 40:31
Thank you so much. I have just loved this conversation. I really appreciate you coming and speaking with me and your book is beautiful and inspiring, and gives a lovely roadmap for how we can move forward into the healing that will actually get us to the place we want to go. So thank you so much, Shawn, I really appreciate it.
Shawn Ginwright 40:55
Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really, really appreciate it. I really loved this conversation.
Omkari Williams 41:01
Great, thank you.
Omkari Williams 41:03
To create the world that we want to live in, we have to decide what that actually looks like. And to decide what it looks like means really leaning into the things that Shawn and I were talking about. Leaning into healing, leaning into possibility, leaning into stories that connect us to one another. Who we are in the world, who we want to be in the world really determines the world that we're going to live in. So I encourage you to take Shawn's suggestions and lean into them and create a world that you want to see very intentionally.
Omkari Williams 41:46
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. And I will be back with another episode of Stepping Into Truth very soon. Until then, remember that change starts with story, so keep sharing yours.