Building culture for co-production - Chapter 6. Looking after ourselves and others

A 3-point plan

Leadership, good policy, and effective delivery all rely on us being the best we can be. Looking after our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others makes this possible. Becoming and being well is central to success.

Here is our 3-point plan.

1. Cover the basics

Eat well, be active, be creative, take rest and sleep well

2. Use the 5 ways to wellbeing in your personal life
3. Use the 5 ways to wellbeing in your work

In our personal lives

Ymgysylltwch… Connect…

With the people around you. With family, friends, colleagues, and neighbours. At home, work, school, or in your local community. Think of these as the cornerstones of your life and invest time in developing them. Building these connections will support and enrich you every day.

Byddwch yn egnïol... Be active…

Go for a walk or run. Step outside. Cycle. Play a game. Garden. Dance. Exercising makes you feel good. Most importantly, discover a physical activity you enjoy and that suits your level of mobility and fitness.

Cymerwch sylw ... Take notice…

Be curious. Catch sight of the beautiful. Remark on the unusual. Notice the changing seasons. Savour the moment, whether you are walking to work, eating lunch or talking to friends. Be aware of the world around you and what you are feeling. Reflecting on your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you.

Daliwch ati i ddysgu... Keep learning…

Try something new. Rediscover an old interest. Sign up for that course. Take on a different responsibility at work. Fix a bike. Learn to play an instrument or how to cook your favourite food. Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving. Learning new things will make you more confident as well as being fun.

Rhowch... Give…

Do something nice for a friend, or a stranger. Thank someone. Smile. Volunteer your time. Join a community group. Look out, as well as in. Seeing yourself, and your happiness, linked to the wider community can be incredibly rewarding and creates connections with the people around you.

In our work

Ymgysylltwch… Connect…

How does your work relate to other people? How can you build and strengthen relationships? How can you make connections that help nature and support and enrich people’s lives? Try using exploratory talk.

Byddwch yn egnïol... Be active…

How could your work benefit from movement? Can you build a walking meeting into your day? How could your work encourage others to be active together?

Cymerwch sylw... Take notice…

Be curious. What is beautiful about your work? What is going on in the world around you and what are you feeling? What is happening around you? Reflecting on your experiences will help you improve what you do.

Daliwch ati i ddysgu... Keep learning…

Try something new. Take on a different responsibility or approach a current one from a new perspective. Take a managed risk. Work to reality. Experiment.

Rhowch... Give…

How could your work make use of volunteer time, time banking, or co-production? What could you contribute that might spark others to join in? Have you tried gifting and requesting?

More about Five Ways to Wellbeing from Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board

People often ask: "how can I be an ally to the trans / black / traveller community?" Being an ally to any under represented group is most effective when your actions are centred on important principles that recognise the connections between marginalisation and where the power lies. These principles are far from unique and are articulated by many marginalised groups.

Overarching principles

Do not try to be perfect. Aim to learn or understand something new.

Speak calmly and respectfully from the heart, speak to the marginalised person first (to acknowledge their experience) and then to the person with power (to show your understanding and to engender learning).

If no marginalised person is present, take the lead in responding to the incident.

If someone has directly received an inappropriate comment, support them to lead.

Your actions with the community you are supporting

• Listen with an intention of understanding - challenge and debate is more appropriate with the powerful, not with the powerless
• Learn and do your own research - your education is your responsibility, not the community
• Engage with the community you are allied to - your understanding and learning should be kept centred on the community, but you will also discover things about yourself
• Ask how to help - otherwise you may be advocating for your needs, not the needs of the community

Your actions with those outside the community you are supporting

• Be an ally when no-one is watching and when it is inconvenient - being an ally is not about rewards
• Understand but do not defend the intentions of others - those without power should have their poor treatment acknowledged first. Acknowledge impacts before exploring causes.
• Use your privileges to advocate for those who lack them - when a community is being separated from the whole, dehumanised and othered, work to connect people together.
• Amplify the voices of the unrepresented and fight for them to be represented - where the community is not represented, first speak of their right to representation and only then advocate from what you have asked and learned.
• Create bridges of understanding between people – observe what people have in common and tactfully speak to this.

Food for thought…

• The social model of disability – how can we apply the social model to everything we do?
• Intersectionality – how can we develop a joint voice across all oppressions?
• Mindfulness – how can we notice, and actively work with our biases?

“Do not confuse your bad days as a sign of weakness.

Those are actually the days you’re fighting your hardest.

With kindness, bad days become an opportunity to learn your most”

Anon

Who is kind?

People need to feel safe to be kind.

When we are paying attention, we are all kind.

When we are at our best, we find it easier to be kinder to a wider range of people.

We all have times when we struggle to be kind.

Kindness is a responsibility

We asked ourselves who kindness is for and came to the conclusion that kindness is

a responsibility that we all hold, not a right that we have

Kindness is not something we can or should expect from others.

If we do then we end up in an unkind tit-for-tat; ‘She wasn’t kind, so I won’t be kind’.

Kindness is unconditional

Kindness needs to be a personal policy, a way of being, independent of how other people are behaving, including ourselves.

Kindness can also be a public policy.

Kind policies cannot be conditional on people behaving in a particular way.

Currently many of our policies are conditional on ‘good’ behaviour.

What would it mean to design truly kind policies?

Who is unkind?

Most people are not trying to hurt others. They are not meaning to be unkind.

People with a different point of view are not necessarily horrible people.

Some people may not have seemed kind for some time. What are they going through that is making them feel so unkind?

Sometimes people who seemed kind suddenly behaving in unkind ways. What happened? How can we help them rediscover their kindness?

Boundaries are needed to keep us safe: how do we build kind boundaries?

When we reach rock bottom, we sometimes make the decision to be kind to ourselves. This is a good decision.

Be kind to yourself to be kind to others

If I look after me then I am (sometimes) strong enough to look after you, too.

If I forgive others, then I can let go of them – we may never meet again but that is okay.

If we can forgive each other and ourselves, then we may overcome our difficulties or differences, and our relationship may become stronger.

As we develop the skills to be kind to ourselves, we can use these to respond kindlier to others.

As we develop skills in kindness for others, we can use these to become kind to ourselves.

(You can start either end of this virtuous spiral!)

How kind are we being?

Important questions to ask yourself:

• where have you been noticing kindness in others?
• how have you been showing kindness to others?
• how are you being kind to yourself?
• how does your policy area (or other area of responsibility) reflect kindness?

Top tips / kindness is a skill

See: Competency framework for leadership

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

“Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage, you cannot practice any of the other virtues consistently.”

Maya Angelou

Imagine being in the unkind person’s shoes and seeing from their perspective that they were being kind, and that it is you who’s being unkind. Maybe look at Byron Katie – “The Work”.

Physiology Anxiety UK suggests practising the "Apple" technique to deal with anxiety and worries.

• Acknowledge: notice and acknowledge the uncertainty as it comes to mind.
• Pause: do not react as you normally do. Don't react at all. Pause and breathe.
• Pull back: tell yourself this is just the worry talking, and this apparent need for certainty is not helpful and not necessary. It is only a thought or feeling. Do not believe everything you think. Thoughts are not statements or facts.
• Let go: let go of the thought or feeling. It will pass. You do not have to respond to them. You might imagine them floating away in a bubble or cloud.
• Explore: explore the present moment, because right now, in this moment, all is well. Notice your breathing and the sensations of your breathing. Notice the ground beneath you. Look around and notice what you see, what you hear, what you can touch, what you can smell. Right now. Then shift your focus of attention to something else - on what you need to do, on what you were doing before you noticed the worry, or do something else - mindfully with your full attention.

In general

Get Help - Anxiety UK

For specific information relating to the COVID-19 virus

Mind: Coronavirus and your wellbeing

For specific support regarding Climate and Biodiversity Emergency

Find Support (climatepsychologyalliance.org)

There is such a thing as healthy shame

Healthy shame calls us to become awake to the ways we are living from false positions of superiority or dangerous disconnect.

Like a moral compass, this kind of shame can guide us and support changes in our behaviour to be more open hearted, less prejudiced and more challenging of discrimination or oppression.

If we ignore or deny healthy shame, we risk staying segregated, closed-hearted and disconnected.

There is also something called toxic shame.

Toxic shame refers to excruciating ideas and feelings of worthlessness, beliefs of being innately flawed, and is passed between people consciously and unconsciously as a way to reinforce power dynamics in families, communities, cultures, and systems.

It can cause us to compartmentalise, keeping parts of ourselves private, hidden and alone, or conversely it can drive us to overcompensate, proving that we are indeed ‘more than enough.’

In summary

Paradoxically, we will not be able to heed the call of our healthy shame, unless we are willing to bump up against, and face the toxicity of the toxic shaming messages that we have ingested. Unless we listen and respond to our healthy shame, we will continue to perpetuate unconscious power dynamics, abuse our privilege, and remain ignorant about how to respond to what really matters. So, here’s the question:

how can we gently welcome healthy shame and ask; what is your message?

Conclusions

Reuniting with parts of us that have been buried under the protectiveness of shame can be akin to finding long lost loves as it is often our most precious parts that have gone underground such as our sensitivity or our power.

For many of us there will be times when the shame storms are simply too overwhelming to process alone. This is not a sign of weakness, it is more a sign of the scale of what you have been asked to carry in your being. Having a therapist or really good friend walk alongside you as you do this work can be incredibly supportive to the process of disentangling from shame's glue.

Take care of yourself and others by doing the small things.

For a simple and effective approach to processing shame, see RAIN by Tara Brach.

Important context

'Sitting with' our experience is a way of approaching our thoughts, feelings and sensations that is rooted in kindness, curiosity, and patience.

Sitting with is not always the right thing to do. Make sure you choose the right time and place, feel ready and able to be caring towards yourself. If it does not feel right, try something else instead. (For ideas, see video clips below.)

Sitting with focuses on being with our process rather than on trying to change or fix something. It requires us to get closer to ourselves, to put down distractions, and to grow the muscle of tolerating more discomfort and uncertainty.

Some people find it helpful to notice their breath. Joanna Macy talks about ‘breathing through’ to help be with difficult emotions or situations.

Some people find it helpful to connect to their feet on ground, sensing legs, arms, or belly.

What helps you to hold or sit with your difficult emotions?

The time it takes to grow this muscle will depend on the levels of stress we are under and the ways that we are wired from experiences that we have already had in life.

Building capacity for 'sitting with' is an ongoing life practice. Take your time. Be kind.

Practicing 'sitting with'

Make a commitment to try it out over a period of time.

Initially you will notice all the ways in which you do anything but 'sit with'. This may feel disheartening but gaining this awareness is a really important step.

Choose something specific to sit with - a physical sensation, an emotion, a thought pattern, a mental narrative.

Play with the question - 'what is this like?' and see if it is possible to receive your experience honestly - knowing that ultimately, whilst you may want to feel differently, you cannot get this experiment wrong.

Try a 5 or 10-minute rule - stay present and curious to your chosen focus for 5 or 10 minutes. If at the end of time you have capacity to stay with it for longer, then expand your 'sitting with' time. If not, it is time to do something different.

Journaling your experience can be helpful, as can sharing with a trusted ally.

Guidelines

Do not dance with difficult emotions on your own; enlist the help of nature, small tasks, creativity or a trusted friend.

Be kind to yourself in whatever way you can. You are supported and you are enough.

Take breaks do small tasks, move your body (for example, drawing or walking) and be in nature.

Articulate describe what you are noticing or feeling to a good listener or safety buddy. (Ask your buddy to listen without commentary and invite them to share similarly.)

Further information

Settling back into yourself

Settling Back into Yourself is a series of 5 short, guided recordings to support you to come closer to your experience. If you are new to the practice of ‘sitting with’, these recordings might be a useful aid to cultivating a foundation from which to practice. They take you through the steps of:

• pausing
• noticing
• receiving
• settling
• deepening

You can receive them for free here from Jenny Rose Smith

Being your best self

When good stress turns to distress

Why recovery time is so important

Setting goals in challenging environments

Working through fear

What happens to your body and mind when you are frightened...and how to cope

Working with our responses to climate and ecological crisis

Disavowal - everyday denial

Climate distress and anxiety

Loss and grief

Supporting others

Hope and despair

While you are reading the following, ask yourself: which of these work for you? Which do you feel like focusing on next? Which have you never tried (yet)?

What helps us thrive?

• Building habitat integrity, being in nature
• Noticing our privileged position – we are super-informed and empowered to do something about it
• Using the 5 ways to well-being to remind ourselves of what we need
• Engaging in narrative leadership and listening (see more below)
• Being curious, fascinated by the system we are in
• Noticing and acknowledging how things really are
• Actively trying to understand other people’s experiences
• Learning new things and understanding things from new perspectives
• Understanding why our situation is so difficult, why humans do not just do it right
• Having autonomy, individually and collectively
• Integrating not compartmentalising aspects of our being
• The power of connection – gathering evidence from each other, together
• Using humour to explore difficult things
• Teamwork – using our strengths to sustain each other
• Experiencing the energy between us, sparking curiosity in each other
• Building our confidence to be present to the people in the room
• Being playful and creative instead of tokenistic and transactional
• Designing simple, interactive processes that embody the 5 ways of working
• Trusting these processes and allowing the emergent and unexpected to surface
• Trying and re-trying practice-based change

What is narrative leadership?

Based on text from Telling the story: the heart and soul of successful leadership by Geoff Mead.

Our sense of identity – who we are – changes when we change the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Organisations, groups, and communities change when the stories and storytelling dynamics (i.e. the processes by which stories are told and made sense of) between people change.

Our view and experience of the world changes as we question the prevailing meta-narratives and imagine new possibilities.

There are 3 elements to narrative leadership:

• know thyself: knowing one’s life stories without being their prisoner – letting go of degenerative and dysfunctional stories and finding positive ones
• stand for something: developing and telling authentic, compelling leadership stories that are grounded in reality, and that help people connect with worthwhile purpose
• only connect: building relationships and communities by creating and sustaining a healthy flow of stories between diverse people and groups

An exercise to try…

1. Sit under a tree or in some other bit of outdoors that you like.
2. Draw a tree, any tree, big enough to write into and around.

Notice how tree roots share sustenance with the rest of the earth. Notice the strength and flexibility of the trunk. Notice how the canopy absorbs light, creates and responds to energy.

The metaphor of the tree expresses the relationship between the 3 elements of narrative leadership:

roots = know thyself

trunk = stand for something

branches and leaf canopy = only connect

3. Add some words, just for you, about these 3 elements of your own story.

No need to share unless you want to.