Evolvenetwork

Love this wisdom from friend and inspiration Richie Hardcore. ❤️

Such a powerful day for meditation, reflection, and prayer. Happy solstice, and Saturn-Jupiter conjunction to all who celebrate. ❤️

A recent bbc article cites one of my favorites—cognitive load theory—to explain why so many of us are getting let done with this new pandemic flow (link to article in my bio.) basically, the idea is the extraneous load (all the stuff you have to cut through to get to work) is heavier than the intrinsic load (the actual work to be done).

In education, we make sure the extraneous doesn’t outweigh the intrinsic by ensuring an application to access content is easy to understand, or the rules to a game to practice a skill aren’t more complicated than the skill itself. If the classroom is noisy, the chalkboard is hard to see, there are distractions to learning—all of this makes the extraneous load heavier.

So how heavy is your extraneous load and how can you lighten it? Getting rid of distractions helps, but so do routines. So the hardest work right after you’ve eaten when you have most energy. Do the tasks that you are most accountable for others to (like calls and appointments) when you are least likely to stay accountable to yourself so you can prioritize independent work at high energy times. “Co-work” virtually with an accountability partner. Set mini goals with specific deliverables for each section of your day. Little tricks to shrink your extraneous load can help you find your flow in this new rhythm and get your groove back. ❤️

I posted on linked in about using mini mindfulness practices before a difficult conversation to reduce implicit bias—mindfulness and slowing down those conversations are one of the only strategies shown to address biases we all have. That’s another post for another day. A friend laughed about my mindfulness...a mindful boxer?!!? But the truth is, boxing is how I learned the importance of mindfulness. It wasn’t until I started practicing breathing exercises, meditation, that I could control my mind’s urge to dissociate in the face of fear. Dissociation in the ring gets you hit. Mindfulness, presence in your body keeps you focused, controlled, and strategic. Boxing is what got me interested in mindfulness, and it’s a great parallel to difficult conversations. If you can stay calm, present, breathing while you are being punched in the face, you can do it while you are talking about things that hurt, feel vulnerable, make you scared. A link to mindfulness and its impact on implicit bias is in my bio.

Looking forward to digging into this exploration of Thurman, a man I am profoundly inspired by; collected by Ellison, a man I profoundly respect.
“Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers.”

Box breathing is kind of like the bad-ass breath of all breathing techniques. It’s used by navy seals, and I first learned it in my training for boxing. It resets your sympathetic nervous system, so if you are getting ready to do something that requires you to tell your brain to stop with all the panic—whether it’s because you are having a crucial conversation, you are feeling emotionally tapped, or you are getting ready to spar—3-5 box breaths are a quick way to reset your physiology and clear your head. The number of beats in each step of the breath and the number of breaths are going to be up to you, so it’s good to play with this every day and see how many counts feel right for you—are you a 3-count on each side of the box? 5? 2? The goal is to feel refreshed and with slowed breathing and pulse at the end—not dizzy or tense. How many breaths or beats at each step of the complete cycle does that take for you?

I saw this the other day and guffawed. Like might be my first time I got to actually live that verb. Ha! But the number of times I’ve heard and experienced empathy misapplied like this, right? This is just one of many misapplication of empathy that makes real listening, real suspension of judgement, and real connection matter so much more. Not sure who made this meme, but thank you for your service! 😂

Today's meditation from Thurman. On totally fu***ng up the haters by shutting down the doorways of their hatred with your burnin, scorchin love that cannot be torn down. Like the chorus to a Lizzo song drowning out some refrain from an old Dixie hymn, your righteous lovin as a political act, as a magical act in the style of Trapwitch or Big Empress Energy, just lovin the s**t out of someone dishing hatred, indifference, or some other aggression fully expecting it back:

"It is a wondrous discovery when there is disclosed to the mind the fact that there may be no direct and responsible relation between two human beings that can determine their attitude toward each other. We are accustomed to thinking that one man's attitude toward another is a response to an attitude. The formula is very neat: love begets love, hate begets hate, indifference begets indifference. Often that is true. Again and again we try to mete out to others what we experience at their hands. But that presupposes that the relation between humans is somehow mechanical, as if each person is utterly and completely separated...There is a profound ground of unity that is more pertinent and authentic than all the unilateral dimensions of our lives. This a man discovers when he is able to keep open the door of his heart. This is one's ultimate responsibility, and it is not dependent upon whether the heart of another is kept open for him. Here is a mystery: If genuine love for you, it by-passes all your hate and all your indifference and gets through to you at the center. You are powerless to do anything about it. You may keep alive in devious ways the fires of you your bitter heart, but they cannot get through to me. Underneath the surface of all the tension, something else is at work. It is utterly impossible for you to keep another from loving you."

He’s talking to you.

Being a full-time coach and trainer and full-time mom is tricky. Every new developmental stage demands a different kind of attention and not more or less attention. Potty training has been replaced with social media ground rules. Teaching my daughter to share has been replaced with teaching my daughter to set boundaries she will demand others honor. Coaching helps us keep the balance we need to honor ourselves, our ambitions, and our families. Balance is possible, but it’s easier with a co-conspirator.

Grateful to have our work featured in Voyage ATL today.

Meet Kristin Moody of Evolve Network in East Lake - Voyage ATL Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristin Moody. Kristin, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today? I am a Personal Coach and an Empathy Trainer. Although I have probably done these jobs since I was a kid, it’s only in the last few years they have […]