The art and science of transformation
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 9, 2021
The art and science of transformation
Whether you’re working on change within yourself or trying to inspire others, it’s easy to get stuck and lost in the process. Change is hard, man. Explore what prevents us from changing, and how we can shake off that inertia and break patterns to move forward, together. We’ll learn how (and how not) to ignite lasting change—not just in yourself, but in those around you, from your closest friends to your broader community.
A workshop guided by:
Cassandra Vieten (Arthur C Clark Center for Imagination @UC San Diego)
Bristol Baughan (Inner Astronauts)
Resources:
Institute of Noetic Sciences - Founded by Apollo 14 Edgar Mitchell - the 6th person to walk on the moon
Transcript
Cassandra Vieten: It's really great to see you all. And it's my pleasure to be presenting this with Bristol Baughan, my collaborator and partner in peace. I'am a licensed clinical psychologist. I am the director of research at the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. And also the founder of Campaign Science.
I spent 18 years working at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. And if you haven't heard about them yet, you should look it up. Institute of Noetic Sciences with the last of those being six and a half of those years being president and CEO. The Institute was founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was the sixth person to walk on the moon.
And on his way back to the earth from space, he had this epiphany when he saw the Earth like other astronauts have had since then. Number one was filled with the complete sense of bliss and wonder and interconnectedness where he not only knew, but felt in down to his bones, that the molecules that made up his body were no different than the molecules that made up the sun.
That's the earth, the stars, the moon. He got to see our little blue jewel from that perspective, from that vantage point. And you have to remember back then there weren't tons of astronauts who had done this and there weren't tons of pictures of the earth from space all over the place. There are now.
So he was totally blown away. And also this was accompanied by a deep sense of despair, noticing that we're insane on this planet. Noticing that we are spending a lot of time creating wars over imaginary boundaries between countries that you can't see from space because they are imaginary.
And also degrading the environment. And when you view the Earth from space and you really get a sense of how small we are in this vast sea of blackness, it becomes that much more important to protect our beautiful planet. And so he spent the rest of his life working to do that. And so when I came into the stream, I became very interested in how people could transform their way of looking at the world in ways that made it not only.
Desirable to do things that were good for themselves, others and the planet, but it became impossible not to that there are people on the planet and some of you are probably those people who have experienced foundational shifts in their perspective, so that it's not possible anymore to benefit oneself while harming others.
Or to benefit oneself, while harming the planet. And you have been able to expand your circle of empathy and compassion so that it's not just you and your family and your friends, but it's people you don't know. It's people who haven't been born yet. It's animals, it's plants and it's our mother Gaia earth.
And so then during the election, when the 45th president I like to call it the T word was elected. And I'm sorry if some of you are supporters I'll just lay my biases on the table. I had a crisis of faith where I thought, okay. It wasn't that the the right wing conservative. Anti environment party at that point that they were disappointing me because they were just being who they are.
It was the Democrats, the liberals, the progressives that were disappointing me, including myself. That we were failing so miserably at getting our point across at messaging in a way that was compelling and inspiring and heart opening and shifting hearts and minds. Not only that we were engaging in rhetoric and methods for persuasion and convincing people about our causes that were unintentionally pushing them further away from us counterproductive in a way we were being the club of people that no one would want to join.
While at the same time, screaming from the rooftops that we wanted you to join our club. And so that said me and Bristol, and about 25 other social scientists, messagers media experts, communication experts. Into a deep dive into how we could improve the way that Democrats liberals, progressives, or not even, even people from other parties, Republicans who are interested in protecting and saving our planet.
How could we be more effective in our communications using the tools from social science, neuroscience, brain science. We learned a lot about it and we developed a curriculum to teach people, how to be more effective in their change-making. And what we learned is that as a side effect of being more effective in our messaging around any issues that we cared about, not only were we enrolling more people, but we were also experiencing less burnout.
We were taking better care of ourselves and our work as Changemakers became more sustainable and rich and meaningful. Bristol do you want a way in here and introduce yourself?
Bristol Baughan: Sure. So lovely to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Cassie is a dear friend and someone that I have learned a lot from I've taken all of her workshops over the years, and it's been an honor to start working together.
We met at a salon and it was this beautiful meeting around Edgar's spiritual awakening and space. And this overview of fact, which was this beautiful mix of our worlds. So everything from neuroscience to clinical psychology, to the art of storytelling and creating moments of awe and together, we got to work on a virtual reality experience that puts people in.
Immersed in that moment with Edgar Mitchell. And so I think where we intersect is my passion for both. How do we tell stories that engage people that move people deeply to give a damn and to connect? Because at the end of the day this energy of connections, feeling an embodied connection, is what seems to be that next level of consciousness that Einstein is talking about, that's the next level that Bucky Fuller is talking about. That there's this place that we have to evolve into through the eye of the needle, if you will, so that we can start. So all of these beautiful solutions that want to emerge can and can emerge through this storytelling and vision creation world building.
So that's my world. I was a filmmaker for film producer for 10 years, and then got into the world of online. Storytelling and then ended up going through an epic burnout and it was all about the stories I tell myself in my own head. And so I went deep into that world. And so I have come out on the other side, combining my lifetimes in a way that helps to guide people from this more extractive way of being into a more regenerative way of being..
And so some of the principles that we're going to dive into that Cassie's done deep research on, and I've lived is we're going to help give tools and skills for how to take these, embody them and start to move through the world in a new way that hopefully is in service to your cause. And to your purpose here.
Cassandra Vieten: Thank you Bristol. And please feel free to engage with us in the chat. And while one of us is talking, the other person will be monitoring the chat and we'll interrupt each other to ask questions, make comments, please participate as much as you can. So we're going to do a little bit of a helicopter tour of what we're teaching in this program.
And we'd love for you to join us for a workshop that we'll be doing in February. Which is going to be a deeper dive into this and Bristol can share the information about that workshop on screen. Oh, Sean is in the room. I'm so happy. Sean Denning was one of our incredible contributors to this program.
Thank you, Sean. He's super amazing. Here's the deal as an agent of change, it's very possible that you are engaging in activities that are actually counterproductive to the exact thing that you're trying to change. You may not be doing some simple things that work better, and it's possible that you could be paying more attention to what you're saying and doing than how you are being, which is quite important.
And so the first thing. That we learned when we consulted with all of these neuroscientists social scientists who had done all these incredible experiments laboratory experiments about what was actually convincing to people, what persuaded people, what changed their mind about things? When were they willing to change their mind about something or take action, as opposed to just giving lip service to it.
And In decades of research that I did on how people transform their consciousness. What we learned, number one is that information rarely changes people, facts don't change minds. And it's so hard for those of us who have been raised in intellectual families or intellectual environments, or have later gone on all of us, really, going K through 12 education through college, especially bad, if we got a master's degree or a PhD. We really believe that if I could just explain it to you again, that is what will change your mind. It's not true. Probably about, I would say 10% of changing people's minds and behaviors is information. Yeah, 90% of what we all engage in as Changemakers and especially large organizations let's take Greenpeace or amnesty international, or, all of these organizations, the Sierra club is delivering information.
That's where most of the investment is going into. So information doesn't change people. Unfortunately, we might then say it's not information. We got to motivate them. We have to really make them understand how bad it is, how terrible this is, how dangerous, how urgent it is. And it's not that there's not a place for that.
There is a place for that. It's very important to get to the emotional level and to enhance the sense of urgency about an issue. That's very important to us like climate or like other issues. The problem is that in addition to this overemphasis on information, we can also overemphasize the urgency of the problem that getting into the problem way too much.
And the reason that doesn't work is that people can only handle a certain amount of threat. So when they become overwhelmed, when we exceed their threshold for their ability to grasp the level of threat that we're talking about, The mind body system shuts down. We're wired that way we get as far away from the conversation as we can we go numb.
We blank out. We zone out. We don't store it in long-term memory. These are all of the things that we are evolutionarily, hardwired. To do, to protect ourselves, to maintain cognitive efficiency, to manage our, motivate our energy levels. And so when we're overwhelming people with threat and with problem, it's actually counterproductive to getting them to see something.
So it's not, again, that it's not important. Maybe it's another 10%, so 10% information, 10% motivation in that case, what does work. What we're looking at is actually putting into place an ecosystem of elements that foster worldview change, meaning that we've got to shift people's way of understanding themselves, understanding reality, understanding the world.
It doesn't have to be everything because that takes a lifetime to change even our own worldviews. It takes those, quite a lot. It takes storytelling. It takes personal lived experiences, if not themselves, than something experiential that allows them to empathize with the emotional level or the lived experience of what we're talking about.
And so one of the things we can try right now and I'll see if you all can do this I guess as an exercise is, take a moment to close your eyes if you're in a safe place to do if you're driving, obviously not keep your eyes open, but allow yourself to reflect on something that you care about.
Tremendously, a message that you really want to get out into the world or something that you want to see changed. Of course, this is climate cons. So you can use climate as your main example. And I want you to imagine yourself across, from someone who does not believe or does not agree with what you're saying and on purpose.
I want you to imagine yourself overly aggressively informing that person about the problem you might raise your voice. You might get intense. Explain, but go ahead and let yourself do it.
It might sound something like this. Hey, we have got to do something here. The greenhouse gases on this planet have gone beyond the point of possibly ever being able to regenerate it. And if we don't change something, now we are facing waters, rising indigenous people being displaced from their homes.
People on the coast will no longer be able to make a living, on just keep going on and on louder, more intense notice what's happening in the other person in this imaginary situation, as you speak, are they getting more inspired? Are they opening their heart? Are they opening their minds more?
Do they feel welcomed into a new way of looking at things? How do you feel as you're doing this? Do you feel effective? Do you feel self-righteous? Do you feel judgmental? You feel passionate?.
So you can come into your body again, opening your eyes, even notice, does your, how does your heart feel? How does your body feel? How do your palms and your heart rate feel? How does it feel to be that kind of informer? Bristol, do you want to weigh in here before we go into the next part?
Bristol Baughan: Yeah. And Erin Heidenreich and amazing storyteller friend said she, I asked people, what kind of motivator are you? And she said four and a bit of two. So a storyteller and a little bit of an evangelist world saver. And it just, as you described. I can feel the pressure in my chest. So it's like this heat rises and I was literally imagining myself, like strangling, like this friend of someone that I know who just is like one of the most triggering humans in the whole world.
And it's been, my he's helped me to actually build, I'd say my liberal, progressive fitness, where at first it was. Total blowout. It was like, couldn't I left my body. I got mean, I attacked. It was just like completely, not only, not helpful, deeply reinforcing his exact definition of who I am and where I'm coming from.
And so he's helped me to build muscle slowly to stay in my body to try to communicate. And then on that note, I also want to tell people, there's also the people that are not yours to move. So we're here to give you tools for the people that are potentially there in your field.
I can learn from him, but I'm not making him the focus of my efforts. He's not who I'm trying to get. So we just Serkan Robinson had a great quote about there are the people who are with you. They're people who are in the middle and listening and open, and then they're the people who are immovable.
And we do not need to spend a bunch of time right there. So I don't know if Cassie feel differently, but just. These are the skills we want to give you to work with people that are in your field. And if they're crazy makers, then you have to set a boundary at some point, maybe five minutes.
Cassandra Vieten: Yeah. Thank you. You'd think that people would want to support or vote for, or donate to things that logic indicates would help them, help their families, help their neighborhoods and communities. And if decision-making relied on logic, you'd be right. But as cognitive science tells us decision-making is not based on logic.
It's based primarily on non-conscious things. Non-conscious drives things that are under our level of awareness. There's a quote that says political behavior is like riding a bicycle. It's habitual hard to explain, not accessible to conscious introspection and explanations usually come forward after the fact.
So it's a lot more non-conscious than we think it is. Instead people's decisions and actions are driven by their perceptions of who they think they are, what they care about the most. And what they think their community is doing. So the strategies that we're going to touch on today and that we teach in our workshop help you to speak to people's identity, values, and sense of belonging.
And so one way that we can do that, we call the rule of thirds. Instead of spending 90% of our time informing. And instead of spending 90% of our time on the problem. We share the problem for a third, no more than a third of the time. We share possible solutions with a third of our time. And we'd spend the last third of our time on a compelling vision for the future.
So let me say that again. The rule of thirds, no more than one third of the time talking about the problem. Less if you can get away with it. Remember Martin Luther King, Jr. did not say we have a problem. He said I have a dream. One-third of the time explaining the problem. Then go into the second phase of telling people what the solutions are.
Now you may be part of an organization, or you may have yourself have knowledge about solutions that might work. And so you are very well versed in what solutions do need to happen. You also might not be, but you can still spend a third of your time on solutions by saying, we need to get the greatest minds together.
We need to put them in a room for three years. We need to foster anything that we can to help them invent, create innovate solutions. So you don't have to know everything to still be talking about solutions. And then the last third of your time, you might say. Look, people, I envision a world that is different from the one we live in today, where the oceans are, have the plastics removed from them where water is the norm of water is sparkling clear, not, "Wow, this is so rare to be able to see through water".
I envision a world where children can play in neighborhoods in areas nearby without any fear of toxicity where we all turn off our cell phones for eight hours a day, whatever your vision is, where are we playing, where we create, where the world is clean and sparkling and cared for, where there's a individualism, but there's also a collectivism.
And that those are equally valued, whatever your vision is. So now I'd like you to take another moment where if you're in a safe place to close your eyes again. Instead of speaking from the part of you that resides above your eyebrows, speak from the part of you that resides between your belly button and your chest. Spend a few sentences with your imaginary, other explaining what you're concerned about.
You might even, rather than explaining the facts about the problem. Explain it. As I am concerned about this, I am deeply committed to address. I'm going to use a different example just for right now. I'm deeply committed to addressing the problem we have with imprisonment, with privatization of prisons, with the inordinate number of people of color who are being imprisoned in 2021.
And I want to tell you that now we're going to move into solutions. I've heard some really great things about things that are actually working. I've heard about a number of programs that have almost eliminated recidivism because they're not punitive. I know there are better ways we can do this. There is a country that passed a bill that prisons could never be privatized and the prison population went down by half.
I think we could try that. I think we should support Ben Jones effort. On decriminalization and reducing our prison population by half. My vision would be, and now we're moving into the third section of vision. My vision would be that young impoverished, underrepresented men would not have prison as one of the high-level possibilities where they'll end up that there would be 17 other possibilities, job training programs in neighborhood embedded libraries, tradesmen ships, apprenticeships, restorative justice taught in communities. I believe we can live this way. I believe that we can live in a different world.
So I'd like you to try your cause that you are working with before problem, solution and vision. I'm going to give us just one minute or two minutes in silence. Imagine yourself, conveying the problem in a way that's about what you're concerned about a solution. Not so much that you're a preacher, but you're more of an experimenter and a tour guide.
I've thought about this a lot and I think I've come across a few solutions. Let me share them with you and then your vision for what's possible if those solutions were implemented. So go ahead.
How does it feel different to use the rule of thirds, as opposed to the over inform over threatened approach? What does your body feel like? What does your imaginary recipient seem like? Are they different than the first approach?
More comfortable. Thank you, Susan.
Is there a way that you can see how this might be not only more effective, but healthier for you?
Yeah, thank you, Liz. A much more inclusive approach because we see ourselves as part of our vision for the future
softer, more open, kinder. They might be listening.
It's very vulnerable to consider changing your world view. Very vulnerable to consider changing what you were taught by your family, what you were taught by society. So even if the facts were there, even if you were convinced it would still be scary to change something that you'd been taught your whole life.
Katie, I love that. I like to while out on my nemeses. Yeah. It's really tempting to be. Extra clever and to wrestle them to the mat. And even when we win on those wars of words, when I can tell you is that the victory is short-lived, it's like a rubber band people that we wrestled to the mat with our clever words, snap back out of sight, out of mind, after they leave.
But people who are welcomed into questioning something that they've always held, dear, that had been a staple of their security in life, such as the climate can never change. We're all, we can extract from the planet forever eight hundreds of different belief systems. But even if they feel so obviously wrong to us, they are part of the bedrock of somebody's safe world, part of their connection to their family, their community.
We're asking them to risk giving that up. Is it more likely that they will consider that risk? If we share our concerns? If we act as tour guides, if we share our visions, if we welcome them into partnership around addressing this issue, as opposed to the basket of deplorables approach.
Bristol Baughan: Yeah, thank you all for your beautiful comments. Somebody meditating, the feeling it's meditative painting. And somebody feels like the imaginary others listening for the first time. Yeah what I think this starts to point to and where we're moving into the next few principles is really starting to see how important this is as work from the inside out.
Where we can get so swept into action, which I, it is a valuable, important aspect of climate. But right now what's being asked of us. With COVID what's being asked of us with climate. With giant shifts on this planet, the level of grief, the level of emotional roller coasters and instability.
This is asking for a level of emotional, psychological, spiritual evolution, and that's really the work that we're pointing to. And you can start implementing these things in your action right away. And you can also start to notice, oh, okay. This is when I go into evangelical world saver. That was my favorite and favorite meaning, I suffered like crazy when I was. And I got into it recently, I hit a pit of despair of hopelessness, helplessness, and I had to sit with the scream is what Bayo Akomolafe.
It's amazing Nigerian teacher talks about sitting with the scream and there's something that starts to shift inside. That allows me to show up and be with that. And then we can show up and be with that together. Katie mentioned earlier that she lives in a place with a lot of people that are deeply religious.
There's a language that starts to emerge. It's actually accessible with people that I moved to rural Montana to build regenerative community. I'm talking to people that believe things that are so wildly different from what I believe. And I have to build it like a like fitness. To be able to just stay in my body and keep my ears open. And so this is part of where we're moving into next with the community. So I'll just hand that back.
Cassandra Vieten: Yeah. Thank you. And thank you, Evan, for your comment, realizing that when you get lost in grief and anxiety and fear, you want to stay in the problem and all that can go wrong and you feel inauthentic.
If you start to focus on the solution vision to. Because if I stay pessimistic, we'll actually get there. The super interesting thing is they've done these lab experiments, where they actually put people into these situations where they're trying to convince another person. They examined something called confirmation bias, which is I fit all information.
I hear into my own meaning system. And what they find is that when people use threats, anger I'm going to try to upset you into changing your mind. People are doubled down on their old belief systems. They keep they're more likely to engage in confirmation bias or only seeing information confirming their previously held beliefs.
Then if they don't get those threats. So it's the, this lie that we've built bought into, or this misunderstanding that we've bought into that I've got to get you upset to get you moving. Now I do need to get you moved. That's different than getting someone scared and upset. So we're going to move into now another thing that really helps, and there are, there's a multitude of things that we can bring to bear on what might shift these non-conscious aspects of people.
One has to do with membership and community. So when someone feels like when I'm asking someone to change their ideas about abortion, about imprisonment, about climate, about, a ton of other controversial topics that are very polarized. As I said earlier, I'm asking them to take a big risk. I'm asking them to get vulnerable.
What I'm asking them to do is risk losing their primary attachment figures. Even if those figures are, have passed away. I'm asking them to give up mom and dad, their family, their friends, people, they grew up around their tribe. And that is the most dangerous thing you can ask any human being. And most other mammals most to do is to give up their community, to give up their attachment, to give up their bonding, their tribe, their people.
And so we have to become. People that could be their new community. We have to point out that there are other members of the community that are doing this, that are like them. We have to enhance the membership part of things, and that can be anywhere from things that we all know about giving people the same color hat, for example, how well did the red hat work?
It worked pretty darn well. We've got to give people symbols of membership in the new way of being. We have to welcome them into belonging. And one thing that will not welcome them into belonging is insulting them, denigrating them, letting them know how stupid and uneducated they are. If they don't understand climate.
How they don't care. So liberals fall into this trap of I'm going to install you in three different ways and everyone you've grown up with and your whole community and ask you to join me, join what you know. Is that insane? Instead, we need to be like, look, I know this is really super hard and we don't have to say this out loud.
We have to come with the added. I have I want to give you a new community that you feel comfortable with. That's why it can be super helpful to get spokespeople for your cause. Not just for their reach, but also if people identify with them, it can help musicians, athletes, people that would be unexpected supporters even better.
To help foster a new sense of membership, a new sense of community. And to be honest with yourself, is your organization, is your movement acting in a way toward other people that would welcome them into your new community? Or are you putting them down and insulting them and saying, you guys are idiots, but if you join us, you won't be anymore.
That's not a community people want to join and people make decisions so much based on what they see around them and who they identify with. It's more than we think more than we think.
Bristol Baughan: Yeah. I just wanted to offer that coming to a rural place and being in communities that I, again, just have not had any connection to Really learning from local community builders.
I've learned so much from a woman here, Laura Garber, who's a farmer. And so she has found the thing that everyone can come around and they can believe all these different things, but they can come together around food. And so we just had a panel before, this is talking about food systems and education.
And so when you start to notice what it is, it's lighting you up. It's probably not a policy specifically. It might be in policy, but instead of coming from up here and what you're sharing about what you're pushing and the agenda, it's what is it that's personal for you?
And so that when you can get to that, Colonel pardon the pun, but that the food, the piece it's okay, we may approach this differently, but we all care about getting access to food. And right now I'm in the world of regenerative, organic architecture and design. So it's people with radically different beliefs coming together, talking about materials, talking about beauty.
Talking about these values, there are so deeply held by people. And we often find a common connection and a common language that when we start using certain language from news if we get that riled up. It's all of a sudden it just the walls come crashing down. And I tell you the most triggering one has been around vaccination in a place like this.
And so it's like we are in close quarters together. Like we are starting to realize oh, whew, we may have this fiery thing where we believe so so differently. But our liberation, our survival is absolutely dependent on each other. So there's no siloing in the way that I could do living in San Francisco was totally different here.
I got to go to the wood guy. I got to go to the farmer. I got to go have these connections in this network that I can not be without. Uber wealthy and then I can just fly it all in, which is not climate savvy anyway.
Cassandra Vieten: Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I saw Evan's comment. The comedy shows like the daily show and last week tonight can do more harm. Because usually, it's always showing how dumb people are on the other side. And bill ma her, I just can't watch anymore. It's actually cruel. And cruelty is not going to get us where we need to go. I love how Katie said it's school sports in my county. Think about this when you are planning events, is it going to be climate day?
You're preaching to the choir or is it going to be pottery day where we do pottery and talk about the earth? You see the difference between those two things? Someone else said at school sports oh yeah. And I love what Bristol's talking about, about, living rurally Katie mentioning it forces you to wear multiple hats.
So it true. And so how can we walk our talk by being a community that people would want to join? A very practical example is there was an interesting study where they put up billboards or big signs at bus stations, trying to get the community to recycle at bus stops, one town they sent. Please recycle your plastic bottles.
It's good for the planet, the other town, they said, please recycle your plastic bottles. Like 70% of your neighbors are, which one do you think was more effective? Of course, it's 70% of your neighbors. So if you can boost the community, building the membership aspect of whatever you're doing, the next email, you send out, the next event you put together, the next talk you give the next PowerPoint you put together.
Have you included some way of welcoming people into membership into community? And have you used the rule of thirds? One no more than one third problem. One third solution, one third vision.
Yeah. Let's see. Personal empowerment is a theme that resonates to a lot of Americans. This is from Cody. How can we bring together climate conversations and personal empowerment messages? I love that. Yeah, that speaks really to this idea that it's people's sense of identity. That we want to address, not so much their thinking right away. It's their sense of identity? What kind of person are you? How could we give people a sense of agency, especially in the climate conversation and where everything, any one of us can do, feels like such a drop in the bucket that people who are very attached to personal empowerment are like, look, I can't make a personal difference here, I'm out. It's not compelling to me if I can't make a personal difference. So that's a great question to explore.
Bristol Baughan: I think that's exactly where we're going next.
Cassandra Vieten: Open that conversation, Bristol.
Bristol Baughan: Sure. Yeah. So we've talked about the rule of thirds problems, solution, vision, all the different ways of motivating that we might default to starting to get a little more creative in how we go about it, where we coming from inside, and then the idea of creating community people want to join.
So how can you be a club that's inviting people will say it's Ken Wilber transcend and include. It's like, how can we continue? And it is a practice that is a deep practice where we don't drop into. The wiling, the nemesis or whatever Katie said earlier. Cause it's a feeling of power.
We get to feel powerful for a half a second and it feels so nice when out here it can feel very powerless. And so the next principle that we want to talk about is really around authentic presence. So where again, where inside of you, are you coming from when you are out and about in the world, in your purpose, in your work?
Because that piece is, for me, it was everything. Cause I realized the world, I was walking around with this assumption that the world was broken and mine alone to fix. So it was heavy. It was never enough of a three on the Enneagram. It was always had to achieve.
You've got to measure that achievement blah-blah-blah burnout. And so now it's been about eight years of working with other humans, helping them to shift from these underlying assumptions that create the energy of burnout. That it's the inevitable conclusion, which is really tough when you're in a society that most industry is operating and designed to burn you out.
There's always somebody younger and hungrier in the film business. That's the way it was always perceived. There's always someone to replace you. So immediately I've got that part of my brain. That's I'm under threat. I have to push, push, can never stop. I can never rest. Even that makes me out of breath. And so having to come deep into wait a minute, who am I?
Big spiritual question. You can go down rabbit holes for days on that one with spiritual teachers for thousands of years. And what am I doing here and instead of this, I need to be driving willing, forcing my way in the world. What are other sources of energy? What are other sources of fuel? What is a regenerative inner environment? What does that actually look like?
And so the presence piece, for me, that I would love to, I'm going to hand it back to Cassie. And then when I'd love to guide you guys in a little experience where we just start to connect to what it is that makes you come alive.
Cassandra Vieten: Yeah. So we've been talking about how some of these approaches that we've shared with you, we've only shared a couple of them. There are about seven more that are part of our system. That are really trying to get into the non-conscious aspect of someone's behavior. And storytelling is one, focusing on vision is one boosting sense of membership and community is one, there are many others, but the most important one is that people feel something from the person who's talking to them.
People sense, a ton of nonverbal cues, tone of voice, facial expression, body movements. But even more than that, they sense a light in their eyes. They sense a feeling coming through them emotionally from their heart. They may have been census kind of an energy coming from them. I think you all know what I mean?
And cultivating. Your inner system, your mind, body spirit complex as you do this work, whether you're having a conversation with an uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table, or whether you're giving a talk to the United Nations, people are sensing. Where is this person coming from? And can I trust them? Am I moved by them?
Am I inspired by them? Do I get chills when they talk? Does my heart do my, does my being dilate? Does it open? Do I feel respected, honored, and welcomed in this conversation? Do I feel something? You want to have, when you're talking to someone or strangely, even through writing or email, this can happen that they get a sense of a ring of truth inside of them.
And like a ringing of a bell. They might not know what you're talking about or even agree with it. But if they get that ring of that bell, they will come back to learn more. And so how do we embody the presence that causes those kinds of. Reactions and other people, we can't manufacture it. That's false.
We can engage in practices and connect with a deeper source of our inspiration, our values, our life's purpose, and become in a way transparent allowing that to come through us as we speak, as we talk, as we write. As we strategic plan as we fundraise. And that's probably more powerful than anything else we could teach you.
So Bristol will maybe give us the experience of a practice that we can do to connect with that and convey it.
Bristol Baughan: Yeah. So just want to invite everyone for just a few minutes, just to get cozy in your seat and close your eyes and just take a few deep breaths into your body.
Really giving yourself permission just to slow down for just a moment. Letting the mind know that you'll be back or whatever it wants to think about. And just a few minutes, and then coming back to feel your feet connected to the earth, feeling supported by this chair. The gravity.
Knowing that the support is always here. And without thinking, I'll ask you a few questions and just notice what arises. So I want to invite you to remember a moment. Any moment, any time in your life, when you felt deeply and profoundly alive. A moment when it felt like every cell in your body was standing at attention, vibrating with aliveness.
Some internal gong had been struck and you are aware of your presence. It could be riding your bike as a kid. It could be standing on a stage. You could be sitting here right now. It could be in a Grove of redwoods. Whatever moment has popped into your mind, let it be enough.
And just letting the memory of a moment of alive ness come, into sharp focus. What did it feel like in your body, in this moment? What sensations do you feel? What do you smell? What do you see? Letting that memory come fully present? Then I want you just to notice what quality is most tangible, what quality is right here, as you remember, is it aliveness? Is it love that opening? Is it joy? Is it excitement that sorrow, whatever qualities here. Just choose it, name it to yourself.
And then I want you to notice where in your body does this quality of aliveness, this quality of love, joy, whatever your quality is, where in your body might this energy live?. Whatever place in your body just draws your awareness, subtly or strong. Notice where it lives and breathe into it.
Letting this quality expand to be whatever size it wants to be. As you breathe into it, allowing it. I'm just asking this energy. One question without thinking, see what arises breathing into this place into your body. How does this energy, how does this energy want to play through me and my gifts. How does this energy of aliveness want to express through me as me on this planet?
Letting it be simple, letting it be a symbol, letting it be a vision that can come in your dreams or a word. How does life want to play through me? Just take a moment to write it down. If it's here, maybe throw it in the chat. Just taking one more moment just to thank this energy, this alive ness, this guide that is always here and acknowledging yourself for every step on your path of your life that has led you to this moment.
Slowly, bringing your eyes back open, maybe stretching a bit, looking at my really cute dog. If there's anything anyone wants to share from that experience moments of aliveness beget moments of the liveliness and moments of loudness is another word pointing to presence.
Cassandra Vieten: Yeah, such a great exercise. Bristol. I remember when I was giving a really important talk and it was, on a stage to hundreds of people with big lights.
So I couldn't see the audience and I was just getting really riled up. Like I gotta nail it. I'm going to crush it. And I sat back and did an exercise like this and remembered I play soccer. I play women's soccer. And I played since I was five. I was like, just get out there and put the ball in the net, just get up there and play like you're playing soccer and it changed everything about my talk.
It was joyful. It was full of air. It was almost like there was grass beneath my feet when I was running while I was talking. So I invite all of you. If you saw yourself playing the saxophone, you can actually bring the saxophone itself into your change-making. Maybe. I want to share with you the workshop that Bristol and I will be offering in February.
We teach this at Eselin in a sold-out workshop. This will be online and at a very modest rate. And we'd love for you to be in touch with us. If you need financial support to take it, how we change and why we don't the art and science of transformation. February 5th and sixth.
Bristol Baughan: Just checking in if there's any questions, anything that anyone wants to share? Catherine said, hi, Catherine, another amazing human who will be joining us at S singing in community makes me come alive. Me too, sister. Me too.
Yeah, because one of the pieces about connecting to that energy is having to feel. It's usually if you're having trouble connecting there's, there might be some grief might be some things too that want to come out.
Thank you, Nisha. One minute. Any last question? I come alive being with the birds and making art Katie oven on wonder at being the universe and experiencing the universe. Amen. She did some holotropic breathwork rollerskating. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. Cause when we lead from here there's like a humor or can be a lightness. It can be a creativity imagination, all the things that I can access when I'm in evangelical world tuber. Unfortunately, her hands are heavy with important books.
Cassandra Vieten: Oh, it's wonderful to have been with all of you. Thank you so much. You can learn more about me@cassandravieten.com and you can learn more about Bristol at Inner Astronauts. And we hope to see you again soon.
Bristol Baughan: Thank you, Kristen.
