PowerPivot

"...and this is the important part for us as intensives. As soon as we figure out what's happening, we can begin to prepare mentally and sometimes systemically and sometimes structurally, for whatever comes next. And now I need to know that I borrowed all of that energy and all of the spoons from the next month. And act like it." Leela reflects on thriving in busy times, planning a retreat that is...

"This is where we shift from critical to curious. Isn't it worth asking the question, what would drive a kid to lose control that way? It's so easy to be critical. But you're gonna get a lot better return on your investment for being curious." Meet Dr. Matt Zareski (he/him), clinical psychologist, international speaker, and advocate for all things neurodivergence, specifically within the LGBTQ+ co...

"This is one of the times of year where we all have to be exquisitely careful of our own inspiration." Here in the late hours of the year, it can be tempting to dismantle, to take apart, to solve a dead end with dynamite. Especially if you're an intensive, and you don't know if you're entirely alive unless something is tugging at the edge of impossibility. As the solstice nears, perhaps this is th...

"When we want to do this sacred work of uprooting injustice and inequity where we're seeing it, we're not just doing it for us. We're holding a space for change to be different." Meet Anuradha Kowtha (they/them), founder of The Kowtha Constellation and a partner in Sowing Post Capitalist Seeds. "My work’s thread could be described as undoing the impact of the inherent indoctrination from capitalis...

"I do not dream of labor. But I do dream of my mere existence being beautiful and interesting enough for a small child to stare and wonder for hours." Let's think about how our work differs from our labor. Let's think about how we build bridges and buffers and install drivers to ease communication between different people in our organizations, just like we use those devices to ease communication b...

"This is your reminder to remove one barrier. This is your reminder to find the thing that you already did. This is your reminder to love on yourself in a little tiny ways...." Thoughts on removing- and sometimes adding- barriers to help us do the the things we need to do. Especially when that thing is to give our selves the care that we so often neglect. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensiv...

"It's not that I don't want the art that my body can make. It's just that sometimes it's been too hard to get there." On asking our bones and muscles what they need, and pausing to listen to them before we launch ourselves out of bed in the morning. Also- our bodies as complicated sewing machines, and fiddling around in our guts with tweezers. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute....

"You're quicker than you think, you're faster than you think. We're intensives. When we really do get focused, we really do move fast...." Finding that focus sometimes depends on choosing a single, solvable problem, one step at a time. And we can do that. Really. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/faster-to-pleasure Recorded 9 October 2023.

"Can I tell you something? Use the tools. Use the tools you have. Use them all the way...." We'll start with the dishwasher- but you know this isn't just about the dishwasher. This is about committing ourselves to really use the tools that we have learned can help us, and to using them fully. For our own good, and for the good of those around us. Transcript and show notes: https://dev.intensivesin...

"It's a hard thing for us as intensives, to let go of our original vision. And sometimes we get stuck." What do we do when we have to shift from plan A to plan B or even to plan Q? What do we do when we have to pick the tomatoes early? Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/picking-early Recorded 25 September 2023.

Samara Bay: "When we tell a story about a tiny moment, and how it impacted us, it is actually the most revealing thing of our character we could possibly do. Where we come from does not win over what we did in a hard moment." Meet Samara Bay, who coaches rising business leaders, political hopefuls, and public figures who need to speak in a voice they recognize as their own to truly make waves...

"Forcing ourselves, as intensives, to take time and energy and focus never goes well. Expansives call that discipline, but we call that torture. Don't torture yourself." On the virtues and challenges of taking one's time- and how feeling in flow and getting things just right, sometimes doesn't feel like taking any time at all. Mr. Rogers singing "I Like to Take My Time." https://youtu.be/z0gtqPURo...

"You can do a lot things with ash, but what you can't do is get more heat out of ash. Because all of the heat, all of the calories stored, have been released. Often we get to dive into a project and work on it really hard. But then we need comp time. We need the break. If we don't take the break every day, we need to take the break in chunks. And our system is not set up to allow us to do that." B...

"There was one seed that just got it into its head that it was going to take over the world. And it did." Growing things that will thrive in the conditions that exist; and also, creating the conditions that allows us to thrive and grow. Sometimes in unexpected places. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/tomatoes-I-didnt-plant Recorded 11 September 2023.

"If you have complicated grain, if you're complicated, you need extremely sharp tools and extremely skilled craftspeople.... You need to understand the sharpening as a part of the process, not an interruption of the process." CN: contains some discussion of the events of September 11, 2001 in the first 65 seconds of the episode. On the humble cabinet scraper, American identity, reaching for excell...

"Here's what I want to give you. I want to give you the low slant of light as fall creeps in. I want to give you a double handful of freshly picked raspberries too soft to do anything but eat immediately. I want to give you the persistent, ridiculous abundance of dandelions. I want to give you fresh strawberries in August, and other small miracles...." A poem for the sunset of summer and the dawn...

"When it comes time for us to harvest, when the air and the sun and the water and the sky all shift in the direction of fall- it is also time to turn toward rest." Harvest can bring a sense of certainty- "here is what I have, this is what I don't. Now I can prepare for what will come. Here's what I can share with my community, and here is what I must ask my community to share with me." And hopeful...

"We're going to build connections, we're going to build community. We're going to build common care into the fabric of our lives. And I know this sounds like more work. But this is the nourishment we need." Sometimes we need stiffening, resistance. Sometimes we need to move with the energy of whatever it is that's challenging us. Always, we need community to connect with and share our ideas with....

"My most effective habit building behavior is to build it around pleasure. I have to tap into that future pleasure, that sensation of possibility of pleasure, in order to build the habit." On building habits around pleasure, both for ourselves and in the spaces where we have power, so that our brilliance can flourish. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/the-...

"Reminders that I have choices have saved my life, literally and figuratively, so many times. You have choices. Remember, always, that you have choices." Our environments are full of urgency, real and manufactured. The manufactured urgency of a flash sale or a sales funnel. The real urgency of external circumstances. The inner urgency of the muse or from the perceptions of pressure. These things a...

"I learned when I was a child that it was better to be lichen. It was better to be hardy and durable and scrappy, and a little rough. It was better to look inedible, lest you get eaten. But what if I'm an orchid?" You're tough. You're resilient. But what if... what if you are also an orchid, who needs just the right shade, the right place to perch, the just right amount of water? It's ok. And you...

"There's something about trust, about being able to trust that something or someone will just be there, that we have lost in this whirlwind of creation and destruction and absorption of companies. It's like we're living through a sort of corporate Big Bang. With so much matter flying around with so much energy, that it's hard to know what we can know. And what we can't." Change is part of existenc...

"If the praise is gonna feel genuine, then the people praising us have to know us well enough to praise us for something that is genuinely ours." On praise- our need for it (even when we want to remain unseen), and how creating space for praise in our workplace can open up space for deeper connections and better communication. https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/praise-and-connec...

"What does it mean to be made visible to people who don't understand the context from which we come? What of our history is important enough to tell and retell? Sometimes telling and retelling those stories only entrenches a way of being that is no longer useful." Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/archaeology-and-exposure Recorded 30 June 2023.

"We, as intensives, are all the way in. And when we are all the way in, it means that when our hearts break, they break all the way. And there is nothing but a bloody pile of flesh on the floor, that somehow we have to get that extra wide pancake spatula and scoop it up and stuff it back inside our ribs." In order to get our ideas out into the world, we need to present- expose- ourselves to the wo...