How to Re-Resource Ourselves
Finding the strength to keep going
I love to give people homework. I love to suggest "next steps", to end my writing and my events with bold calls to actions. I love hoping that someone will take my words as wind in their sails and run with it.
And whenever I start putting together the action segment of whatever I'm working on, I have a nagging voice in my head that says, "Ben, 95% of people reading are not actually going to do that." When I dig deeper and ask myself why that is, I never jump to conclusions of malice or lack of caring. The answer, or at least my best guess, is that people are tired, are burned out, are feeling powerless, and have run out of the resources they need to be able to act.
Many of us (and at plenty of moments in my life, myself included) have probably spent a lot more time feeling guilty for not acting than we have actually acting. What this means is that guilt doesn't work. If it was going to successfully motivate you, it would have done so already.
To help with this, I decided to write a piece on how we begin to re-resource ourselves so we can reclaim our ability to act—not just to act by showing up at a protest, but to volunteer for a worthy cause, to have a difficult conversation, to go out and make a new friend, to get through another day. The burnout so many of us are feeling, I think, in many ways comes down to feeling completely un-resourced and trying to act and live like we're not.
This week, I’m on vacation with my wife as I was desperately in need of some re-resourcing myself. Burnout has been on my mind more and more lately—both in checking for the “yellow lights” in myself, and in hearing from more and more people I love that things feel like too much.
In large part that’s what inspired me to write last week’s article on the desire to “make a difference you can see”, but even as I was writing it I knew that the solutions there would only go so deep—and that the problem I was writing up against goes much deeper. So today, we’re going to talk about it!
Defining Resources
I'm using a really broad stroke here to define resources, not just as stuff but as many pieces that contribute to the whole picture of motivation. Just like the crew of a spaceship checks a million things before liftoff, we check our variety of resources before deciding if we’re able to take an action. As you read through this list, or perhaps at a later date, try to take some time to meaningfully reflect about your access or relationship to each of these resources. Where are your strengths? Where are your challenges?
Time: How much time do you have that you can decide what to do with?
Money: Can you afford to donate? Can you afford to take a day off to go and testify at the capital? Can you afford potential financial repercussions of highly public support or advocacy?
Safety: Do you have a safe place to return to after a challenging day? Do you feel safe enough to find ways to get involved?
Attention: Underrated but highly important, can you pay attention to a nonfiction book about queer history? Can you focus on a project or goal and complete that task? Can you delay gratification to take a boring but important action for justice?
Empowerment: Do you feel like you actually have the ability to make a difference? Do you believe your vote, your voice, your presence has the capability for change? Do you have any examples of times you contributed to something changing?
Energy: Do you have energy to do the things you want to do? How is your quality of sleep, or your ability to nourish yourself through food?
Interests: What do you like to do? What are you good at? What do you know about ways to use those interests to make a difference?
Healing: Working for change, or even just living in the world as a marginalized person, is traumatic. Do you have any practices for healing from losses, grief, or oppression? Or do you allow the wounds to pile up in the name of "resilience?"
Knowledge: Do you feel like you know enough to have a conversation with an uninformed family member? How about to testify, or just to decide where to act? What do you know about strategies for changemaking?
Community: Do you feel isolated? Do you have people you feel safe around socially? Do you have people you trust to advocate with? Are there people you can ask for help? Are there people who ask you for help?
Pleasure & Joy: What is the value of pleasure and joy in your life? How often, and in what ways do you choose to find joy? Do you believe joy and advocacy can happen at the same time?
Did I miss any? Do any of these resonate with you in particular? I’m eager to know what other ways I can support others in resourcing themselves!
Getting Real with Ourselves
Obviously, these resources don't exist in a vacuum, or independently of each other. I need money to nourish myself with quality food. I need safety to build community. I need time and attention to expand my knowledge. Even so, starting to recognize which of our resources might be (either actually or perceived) running on empty is a helpful exercise in figuring out what might be holding us back.
The big questions for me as I reflect on all these things are often: What greater powers (social media companies, GOP strategy, etc.) are invested in stealing this resource from me, and in what ways am I standing in my own way of filling this cup? There is simultaneously so much more that is not our fault and yet so much more that is within our ability to change than we think.
How to Start
I know this feels like a lot. It IS a lot! I'm sitting here across the waves of the internet asking you to look quite deeply into yourself at your flaws, your weaknesses, your fears. That's frightening. It's okay! Here are a few reminders and affirmations as you prepare to embark on your journey of re-resourcing yourself.
Take a deep breath and give yourself so much more softness and grace as you work through this process. It will be challenging, and it will be okay. Don't be ashamed to hold your own hand. I am known, in my most private or fearful moments, to wrap my arms around myself and say “it’s going to be okay”. My softness is my strength.
If you feel yourself being pulled towards comfort, towards stagnation or saying "I have to wait for x to start being ready to make these changes", I want to gently nudge you here with a paraphrased quote from Brandi Sellerz-Jackson: We must stop acting like house-sitters in our own lives, waiting for the rightful owner to come back in the right circumstances and clean up and start living. Our lives have started, we are living them, we are not waiting for a start line, and it is never too late (but always at least a little urgent) to decide to claim our own lives.
Recognize that our current landscape of social media and news is highly activating, and uses deeply moralizing language to constantly inspire "action" (read: social media engagement) through guilt. How is nobody talking about this? Don't look away! What will you tell your grandchildren? Remember again: If guilt and shame were going to work as motivation, wouldn't they have worked already? It's time to try something different.
Some resources aren't able to be changed, and that's okay. What's important is not making sure every cup is overflowing. It's making sure you are able to align your actions with your resources so you don't hurt yourself by pouring from an empty cup. This is a particularly critical reminder for those folks who are disabled and chronically ill, folks who are poor or working class, those living in areas or situations that are not as safe. You are not a worse or useless advocate because your cup cannot be as full as someone else's. We are all just doing the best we can.
Don't try to refill every resource right now, instead pick one—perhaps it's whichever one has the greatest impact on your life, or whichever feels most doable to approach—and start trying to wonder what it might look like to resource yourself there. What kind of support do you need?
Starting Tips
If you'd like, I can make this into a much more robust series where I go in depth about how to rebuild each of the above resources. If you'd be interested in that, and if you have a specific resource you'd like me to start with, let me know!
For now, since I know that both time and attention are highly limited resources (not by accident) I'll close out by providing one or two reminders or reading suggestions for each resource to start you on your journey.
Time: Consider performing a time audit of where your time is going, which of those things are optional, and which of those things are nourishing vs draining. Remember: Time is concrete, and you cannot "find" time anywhere. It does not hide. You can only choose to make time by picking a priority.
Money: Obviously this is the hardest one for me to fix. Times are tough, but I'd highly recommend leo aquino, the writer of Queer & Trans Wealth for some great suggestions to help find relative financial stability.
Safety: Take time to reflect on your safety concerns and where they stem from. Some are highly legitimate, while others may be deeply heightened based on social media and news fearmongering. How often do your news sources spark fear? Consider checking out this article on identifying fearmongering.
Attention: The intentional theft and destruction of our ability to pay attention as a society is not an accident, and understanding this has been the single biggest thing that changed my ability to engage meaningfully not just with advocacy but with my job, my relationships, and my life. Read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari to learn more about the problem or an article like this one if you are ready to start finding a way out.
Empowerment: Consider checking out a book like “Marsha” or something similar to learn more about social movements through history. Ground yourself in your ability to make change. Ask yourself: From whom do I learn that I am powerless? In whose best interest is it that I feel this way? How often are these the same person or entity?
Energy: There are so many pieces of conventional wisdom about restoring our energy. Try picking one new habit to work on in the areas of regular movement, sleep hygiene, and nourishing food. I know there are many things draining our energy, and I can't promise that movement or good sleep or quality food will fix it, but I can promise that no movement, bad sleep, and poor nourishment will make it worse!
Interests: Reflect on your passions, your talents, and your hobbies. Do a little research into how these might help: Google things like the name of your hobby/interest/skill + "for change"
Healing: This is a big, hard, scary one. I would highly, highly recommend the book "On Thriving" by Brandi Sellerz-Jackson, which has made a major, major difference in my life and mental health. Also, consider looking up whether your insurance covers therapy. I think everyone should be in therapy, especially right now!
Knowledge: What specific knowledge-gaps stop you from getting involved? Lack of knowledge of the issues, or of how we got there, or of what we're supposed to do about it? Go to a local bookstore or library and share with them that you're ready to learn more about that topic. You will only learn more if you seek out the knowledge!
Community: Luckily for you, when I moved states last year I wrote a whole article about how and why to build community from scratch. Here it is!
Pleasure & Joy: Y'all already know this is my favorite one. This is my thing. To start working on your relationship to joy, especially in relationship to changemaking, I would highly recommend reading this article I wrote last summer titled "Joy as Resistance Isn't Going to Cut It". Perfect for skeptics and newcomers alike!
~Fin & Thanks~
Okay, I know that's been quite a bit of reading, and tremendous thanks to those who made it all the way here! Props to you—choosing yourself, and choosing to grow in ways that might be new, challenging, or frightening isn't easy. But it will make a difference. The more well resourced we are, the more we can show up in ways we're proud of, give love and resources to others, and make the changes we want to see in the world.
Refilling our cups is a lifelong project, but we have to start somewhere!
All my love as always,
Ben
This is the most important article I’ve read in quite some time, and I will be sending it to so many people. Thank you!
What you say in the beginning about (my words) writing into silence resonates. Though you get glimmers. I recently chatted with a friend on my email list, and I had just sent an email out about rest. She told me it was a good reminder for her.