This is the Too Many Trees newsletter, where I share what I’ve been writing and reading in the realm of leadership and personal development. My coaching practice is centered around the idea that we are more effective in moving towards our goals when we become more conscious and intentional in focusing our time and attention, and learn how our unconscious patterns are holding us back. If you know somebody that could benefit from my perspective, please forward this to them or let them know they can set up a free intro chat with me.
I am participating in a whiteness affinity group, and this week the facilitator pointed out that whiteness is not a culture, so something was lost when we assimilated into American whiteness. They asked “What did you (or your family) give up to be white?” The answer that popped into my head was one that surprised me, and I wanted to reflect more on it here in this newsletter and get your feedback as a reader.
When I imagine indigenous cultures around the world, or even think of other cultures outside the US, the main difference I see is a sense of calm and innate value. People in such cultures trust in their own value as human beings, simply for existing. It’s the very first statement of the Tibetan Buddhist Lojong practice, treasuring “the rarity and preciousness of human life”. In such cultures, people don’t need to prove anything, they don’t need to do anything, they have value just for existing.
American hypercapitalistic culture instead asks “What have you done for me lately?” The first question people ask each other in America is “What do you do [for work]?” with the answer being used to judge and classify the person. Instead of human beings, we are “human doings”, focused only on what we do next because each moment is seen as a potential chance to lose all of our value as people if we make the “wrong” move. What I find interesting is that we mostly treat babies as having innate value, but as soon as they get into school, grades and metrics and “success” start to drive the narrative rather than continuing to connect to their pure essence.
I am reminded of Lynne Twist’s book The Soul of Money, which identified three toxic myths of capitalism:
There's not enough.
More is better.
That's just the way it is.
All three myths focus on the value we produce, rather than the value of our existence. And Myth #3 is particularly critical as it prevents us from challenging the attitudes of scarcity (Myth #1) and of greed (Myth #2).
So when the facilitator asked that question of what was given up to assimilate into this culture, I felt sadness strike me as I thought about how I’d given up my own sense of my innate value to fit in, and became a hyper-achiever solely focused on the next result. I’ve started to loosen the hold of those toxic myths of capitalism on me, but it’s buried deep within me.
Even as I write this on a Sunday afternoon, my family is asleep, taking naps, and I probably should be as well, and yet some part of me is driven to get this newsletter out because shipping matters. And yet if I trusted more in my innate value, perhaps I could just relax and take the nap, rather than feel like I have to produce something to “earn” my value today.
Just writing that puts things in perspective, so I’m going to sign off. Let me know if any part of this resonated with you, as it’s a topic I’m likely to continue exploring.
And now for the normal personal development content:
LinkedIn: These are ideas or questions that help my clients (or myself), and that I share via LinkedIn to help a wider audience.
I was once told that there are only two reasons people change: inspiration or desperation. As a coach, I prefer inspiration, looking to a future possibility, rather than the desperation of avoiding some unwanted outcome.
Conventional success is often found by following the rules and playing the game as it is today. Leadership comes from leading people to a new possibility and/or changing the rules. But leadership is often lonely and scary because it is different, so what will you choose: Leadership or success?
As a student and early in our career, we are rewarded for getting to the right answer fast. But the job of an exec is to make tradeoffs between a number of equally “right” answers. It’s a different job, and requires a different mindset to succeed.
Articles and resources I’ve found interesting:
Reading David Whyte's poem, What I Must Tell Myself, really struck me, especially the lines “And the world works on my behalf catching me in its arms when I go too far. I don’t know what I ever could have done to have earned such faith."
I liked this analysis of why the Canadian tech scene doesn’t work with an application of James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games framework. He posits that Canadian investors, with more finite resources, are more likely to play the finite game of trying to “win” or make money, and as a result, they prevent themselves from playing the infinite game of expanding the game, and ironically limit their returns as a result.
I found Tim O’Reilly’s analysis of why Elon Musk is so rich to be fascinating, positing that Musk is benefiting from a betting economy where people are investing in Tesla et al in the hopes that it will someday grow into its valuation. However, most people live in a dollar economy without a multi-decade time horizon - they don’t have what O’Reilly calls “supermoney” that is essentially an interest-free loan from the future.
Both of these analyses reminded me of this article on principles of systems thinking by Russell Ackoff as he shares several counterintuitive lessons from a lifetime of studying systems.
Thanks for reading! See you in a couple weeks.