90 | Ways to "Do the Work": Setting Up

Welcome to the Small Steps Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Sue. I'm a nutritional therapy practitioner, blogger at Small Eats, author of Not at My Dask Lunch, designer, and avid learner. In my nutrition practice, I help you cut through the health and wellness noise to find what works for you.

This podcast is here to educate, inspire, and empower you to grow, try new things, and live a life you truly feel good about one small step at a time. Each episode has small steps that you can try and see how they work for you. You can find all the show notes, small steps, and other episodes at small-eats.com slash podcast. Remember, the materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only.

They are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Well, hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Small Steps Podcast. I'm your host, Amy.

Thank you so much for tuning in and being here. This is episode 90. And like I mentioned in the previous podcast, episode 89 where I gave some updates, this is the start of a series all around how to quote, do the work. We're gonna break it down across five episodes and focus on particular things in each episode, give you some small steps that are various levels of small.

And we'll figure that out. Thank you everyone who reached out and supported me in taking some time for myself and being here for this work. I really appreciate that. I hope that you are doing okay and taking care of yourself.

Maybe you need a little bit more care during this time. Maybe this is a time when you are really figuring out what care looks like for you. There have been so many moments things in this year that we're recording right now, 2020, that have really been very strong indications for a lot of us. Shit's not okay.

It's really important to take care of ourselves even more and that there's work to be done on an individual level, a cultural level, familial level, all the levels. So there's a lot of things going on. And I want to also mention that please give yourself the permission to rest and take care of yourself. If you need it because these times, these events could be activating some older deeper stuff for you, whether that's something that you know or something that you feel and you may have to put the actual finger on what that is later or maybe with the help of a mental health professional.

But this could be bringing a lot of stuff. So please take the time to rest and take care of yourself. That rest and care is really important. So with everything that's going on, like I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of important conversations happening with a lot of folks, non-black folks of color, white folks, black folks doing a lot of internal and external work on anti-blackness, white supremacy and racism.

A lot of people are really seeing this, maybe not for the first time, but it's clicked. There's this moment that has been talked about a lot within my own social justice community of like, there's something different about this time. There's something that like, something has clicked for a lot of people and people are actually really seeing it and also mobilizing. A lot of people have been doing a lot of amazing things to support black folks or support each other if they're black and supporting their own community by protesting, by calling, by emailing, by donating, by signing petitions, by diversifying their feeds and understanding that there are more things that they can be doing by buying the books, by reading the books, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And that's great. And when I record this and when it goes out, it'll be about two-ish months since the first calls to action and protests really started when all these things really happened. And so there's been a little bit of time and I wanna say that everything that people have been doing are great. It's amazing to see this work, this progress, this dedication and this is some lifelong work.

These systems of oppression have been around your entire life and long before you, not to sound like doom and gloom, but it just to say that it's gonna take time. Like it will take time for you to really see them and how far they go in your life, in your community, in your country. I'm gonna sign this on the United States, by the way, because that's what I know. I do know we have some listeners from outside the United States.

It will take some time to see how it's affected you because oppression affects all of us and how much and in what ways depend on so many different factors. And then once you see that, figuring out, well, what do I want to do instead, while still acknowledging that we are in several systems that continually reinforce themselves, to continue oppression, how do we see it, name it, and then live inside of it while not still being of it, and we're collectively towards liberation to shift and change those systems. That's a lot. It can be super overwhelming to figure out how to keep this work going.

And so that's why I created this series because when I started doing this work in a very serious way about two years ago, I'll be honest, it was really overwhelming. And just like all the work that I talk about, through the health and wellness lens, the small steps, chunking things down, figuring out a system that works for you, that applies here. That's how we stay on track with what we wanna do. That's how we make it feel more manageable.

And that's how we keep the momentum going. So if you listen to this podcast anytime in 2020, you saw that I did an intention setting series at the beginning of this year. So we're gonna take a similar approach for this series. So next five episodes are all gonna talk about this.

I'm gonna break it down into different things. And then with each episode, there will also be resources and things that you can look into that will help. And then please also keep looking beyond the things that I share because depending on what you're specifically is focusing on, there may be other things that you're looking into or other things that you find, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So before we jump into this series, like I've given you a little bit of background, and I really wanna take a good portion of this first episode of this series to be really clear with you on why I'm doing this.

Because in this time, now that there is an increased awareness of social justice and that work, there's also a lot more voices having a lot of conversations. And I just wanna be really clear on why I'm sharing this with you and like what approach and what lens I'm talking about so that you understand what's happening here and that this is what it is essentially. So why am I doing this? I've been there.

I have been there at the start of my own social justice learning and unlearning and wanting to figure things out. And how do I do the work and show it for other folks and do all these things? How do I do it? It's really overwhelming.

How about the radio, like I mentioned earlier, small steps still apply here, breaking things down into more actual steps that is helpful here too. So I wanted to share this based on experiences and things that I have learned while doing this. And also I wanna say that learning more about social justice, systems of oppression and liberation, which is the particular lens in which I do social justice work and education have really helped me see so many things clearly from how the world operates, really operates, which was definitely not my worldview before and when I learned to the fact that diet culture exists and why it's so hard to rest and like so many more things, but those are some of the highlights. These systems really make it hard for things to change and honestly that does directly affect the work that I do with my nutrition clients and that affects the progress that other people are trying to make within wellness and within their lives.

Diet culture and busyness, also among many other things, keep us so fucking busy. They keep us so focused, so hyper focused on these things, like getting smaller, making those gains, doing that workout, being fucking perfect, always having your meal prep on point. None of these things are inherently bad, but they also make it really difficult. The systems that we are in that perpetuate, that this is important, that this is what you're focusing on, this is how you measure your worth in the society, this is how you're accepted in love, it can then make it really hard to see the forest from the trees and even zoom out to see that this is in fact systemic shit and that is keeping us busy so that we don't become aware of it to realize that that's not something that works for us and that we want something different.

So that is more of a direct connection to why I find this work important and why I'm talking about this on my health and wellness podcast, which honestly this podcast is such a very unique flavor of health and wellness, like I've never talked about so the goal is ever unless I was like, no, this podcast really is about smoothie bowls, but systemic oppression affects our health on many different levels based on our identities and the combinations of identities that we have. And there are some things that are honestly a little bit out of my own depth of understanding as I continue to learn and continue to recognize my privileges across class and things like that, but there are real things that systemic oppression affects in people's health, food insecurity, food deserts, certain groups of folks dying at higher rates from diseases or being at higher rates from certain ones, where food comes from and what food gets subsidized within our government, which then affects the price of that cost which the price of those foods, which then affects the availability of those foods in certain areas, higher stress levels, less space or time or access to information, time for self care or time for any kind of care for themselves, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So all of these things actually really do affect your health and your wellness. The levels in which they affect you as a person, listen to this right now can be different based on your identities and your combinations and also they affect people in a real way.

So the more that we can understand social justice and assistance of oppression, the more that we can see that this isn't just a thing that happens on the news and isn't uprising related to the murder of folks, that this is an everyday thing that happens all the time that affects us on different levels directly and indirectly. So that is why I'm doing this series. It's really important. It's really important to me.

It's really important to like actually making changes that you want to make and then therefore freeing up your attention if you want to, to then extend that understanding and that helped other folks as well in a way that is supportive for them and really is something that they want. So important disclaimers rolling into that is that I am not a social justice educator. I am not trying to position myself as a social justice educator at all. I have learned from a lot of amazing people directly and indirectly and without them, I would not have the language, skills or understanding that I do now.

I will be sharing who those people are later in the show and how you can work with them or learn from them. And please, if you are working with them or learning from them, please consider compensating them for their time because that's really important. This series will provide you with additional structures and steps on how to do the work, like a framework, but it does not cover the depth of knowledge around social justice and the systems of oppression. And once you do that actual learning of like the information, that's the big stuff.

This whole series is ways to set up things, way to keep momentum going, but I'm not providing you the actual social justice information and systemic oppression information. That is for working with a social justice educator or educators or learning from people that have done this work and understand this stuff for years and years and years. I'm like, hey, how can we structure this? How can we keep going?

I'm going to be sharing my own experiences as I've done this work, important considerations. But I am not here to position myself as a social justice educator at all. This is by no means a comprehensive podcast series. You will not come out of the end of this series being like, I know and understand everything.

My goal for you when you listen to all five episodes is to have a lot of questions to ask and consider and think about. And steps that you can consider trying and taking to see how you can build in this social justice work into your everyday life, into a way that is manageable, not overwhelming and sustainable. That's what this podcast series is about. It is not about teaching you all the things you need to know about social justice because that's not my link.

Just wanted to be really, really clear about that. I also wanted to say that I'm going to be talking about some uncomfortable stuff here. Like I do in a lot of different podcasts. That's just the nature of a lot of this work.

So I think it's really important to check in with yourself to see if right now is the best time for you to listen to this episode, this series, et cetera. If you are tired or feeling a lot of things, you may not have like the attention or the space or the capacity to really listen and to let this soak in. And that's okay. Listen to this at the time that it is the best for you that you can actually receive this.

If you listen to this podcast and you're like, yeah, I feel like I can listen to this podcast and you feel uncomfortable things coming up, please check in with yourself and get curious about those. Ask yourself where those are coming from, who those might be from, if they're not from you, get curious about that. If you have someone that you can process with in your life or that's a close friend or a therapist, consider diving into those, journaling if that's helpful for you, get clear or as clear as you can on what that discomfort is and what it's actually about. Also, I wanted to say that there is a common feeling that can come up, especially around social justice work and learning and education.

There is this like, oh my God, I'm a horrible person. I am a terrible human being because I didn't notice. This could be a constant pattern that you have that comes up around different things or this could be a particular socialization that you have. This can be grief, this can be so many things.

And know that it's common and systems of oppression work because they're invisible. Like when they succeed, they're invisible and no one questions them. So the fact that you are starting to see this now, understand it now and that there are a lot of feelings coming up, very normal, also okay. And very much I encourage you to process that with people that you trust, personal, professional, and get curious on what the root of that is for you because that could be tied to other things that happened in your life.

Patterns or other things like that could be a bigger thing for you or it could just be, oh my God, there's so many things that I didn't see before how did I not see this because systems for oppression were working and making sure that they weren't seen. So something to consider here. If you listen to the show before, you know that I have a huge proponents of kindness and self-compassion. So I do want to say please give yourself a lot of that, especially if there are a lot of uncomfortable feelings coming up as you listen to this podcast and in general as you do the work around social justice.

So to get a full context around how I do this work, my approach, my philosophy, there's a little bit of pre-work if you haven't listened to this podcast before or if you haven't listened to these particular podcast episodes that I've done previously. So to really understand my position and where I come from, I highly recommend that you, and I've been talking about these episodes for quite a while if you've been listening to the podcast in the past a few episodes. So I highly recommend that you listen to episode 32. So episode 32 is a longer conversation, but a really good one.

If I can say that myself, with my social justice teacher, friend, mentor, Dr. T. Williams. This episode really shows you how I came to my own social justice education, like the background of why it's important to me.

It also talks about what exactly the lens of my social justice work takes, which is the liberatory approach and what the liberatory approach is and how it can be slightly different than the anti-racist, anti-oppressive approach. So that would be a really good one to understand the framework, I highly recommend you listen to that. If you can listen to things faster, you can do that. But that would be really helpful for you to set the stage to understand what exactly my approach is, because everyone's approach to social justice is slightly different and that's okay.

And so you'll have a deeper understanding of why I approach things the way that I do. The next episode that would be helpful to listen to is episode 33. That is basically a follow-up episode with just me continuing to talk about how I've done the work, what that's involved, and as well as additional small steps to take as you do the work yourself. So there's a lot of like, I wanna say like one-on-one kind of things in there too.

So those two episodes are really a great place to start. And those have so many resources and helpful small steps in the show notes. And we're gonna build on that from here. So I'm probably not gonna touch on whatever I've talked about in 32 and 33 as much.

So if you do want to listen to those episodes again or check out the show notes, I would highly recommend that you do that. Those are things that give you a lot of helpful reference in context for how I talk about things. And again, context about me as a person, so that you understand like my positionality as I talk about this is that I am a non-black mixed race person of color. My ancestry is Chinese and the rest of my ancestry is European.

I live in Los Angeles, I live in a major metropolitan area. I appear more on the ambiguous side, but slightly more on the lighter white passing side. I'm in an interracial cis-head relationship with a Latinx man. And I've been really focused on social justice education for at least two years.

I was at class privilege from when I was raised. So there are a lot of things there that give you additional context about me. So that was a bunch of setup for the series. I will be reminding about some of these disclaimers throughout each episode.

If you don't listen to them all as they come out every week, I'm just gonna say them again, just so that people know, just so that people understand that this is where I'm coming from and this is what I'm sharing. So we've finally gotten to the meet of this episode. This is all about laying the groundwork for how you can do the work. You will find your own ways to do it.

These are just suggestions and ways that I've approached it or looking back. I was like, oh yeah, that would have been really helpful for me, but also reminder, you're the expert on you. You know what works for you and what suits you, what your sensibilities are, what you need, et cetera, what you don't need. So while I talk about these recommendations and small steps, go with what works for you, try it if you want, and if it doesn't work for you, that's okay.

Or maybe if you're like, huh, I'll do this. It kind of works, but maybe I need to change it. Go ahead and do what you need to do, what works for you. I always invite people to try stuff because you never know what works until you try it.

Everything in life is an experiment. But if something really doesn't work for you, you definitely don't have to do it or keep doing it. If you try it once and you're like, no, no, no. So usually the show works as like I talk a lot and then I give separate small steps.

Each thing that I'm gonna be talking about is a small step and then I'll wrap up the bullet points at the end, like the high level bullet points of what those are. But this episode, we're gonna break down the small steps throughout the whole show. So one of the most important things that's really helpful for you, small step number one, is define your values and your whys. This is one of the most important things to do, in my opinion, because we have to know where we're starting from and why the fuck this is important to you.

So getting clear on your values can be really helpful to see what's important for you, why you do this work, and what's gonna keep you doing this work in the long term. I've talked about values a lot on this show in various episodes and various things. And if you know your values already, great. Maybe look at those again and be like, how does my social justice work or the work that I want to do times my values?

Maybe think about that. Maybe you haven't looked at your values in a while and maybe you wanna revisit it. If you never defined your values and you're like, how the fuck do I do that, there's gonna be a link in the show notes to a values exercise that I talk about a lot. Basically, you're gonna go through circle a bunch of values and then start narrowing it down until you get about three to five.

I like five, some people like three. And then in this particular case, once you have your general life of values, I would invite you to take a moment and reflect on why exactly your values are important in the social justice lens. Like how do your values tie to learning about social justice and vice versa? This was something that when I did my work with Dr.

T, this is one of the first things that we did. I had already defined my values before and I'd known what those were, but also bringing those two things together of values and social justice really, really, really helpful. So once you know your values and then once you know your values around social justice, it's also really important again, to define like, why are you doing this? Get very specific on why you are doing the social justice work.

For some of us, it's personal, for me, it's very personal. And for some people, it might not be as directly personal. Then so it's important to figure that out because the more that you can make your wise, really personal for you and more specific to you, the better. Like sometimes I want to do this because this is the right thing to do is a little bit too amorphous and it can be really hard to tie that back to like something specific to your life, to your values, to your heart.

So take a moment and you don't have to like have this all figured out. And like one go, this can continue to grow and you can kind of discover your wise. Maybe as you're doing your work and understanding and learning and unlearning, maybe you'll come to your why as you do the work, but it's important to at least start somewhere and take a moment and be like, what is important to me? What are my values?

What guides me? And why am I specifically doing this work? Because knowing why and knowing what's important to you, we're gonna keep this going. So again, if you have not ever done a values exercise and you don't know what they are, the link is gonna be in the bio.

There's no like template that I have for figuring out your wise. So do that in whatever way works for you. If you're a journaler, if you're an auditory processor, if you wanna talk that out with a friend or a therapist, like figure out the ways in which would be best for you to set up some time and do a little bit of exploration on what that is, what those are, why they're important to you. If you're a visual person, write this stuff down.

Write it down and make it somewhere visible, whether that's on the wall, in your bathroom, on your phone, somewhere where you see it all the time, so that you have that reminder of like, what's important to you and why and where you're going to have to have a visual reminder. So after you define your values and your wise, then I invite you to define a starting point to focus on. Also, as you define that and do that work, you can also check back on yourself to see if you can handle more, or if you can handle some slightly different information that's not exactly the same. So it may be really clear to you what you wanna start focusing on, but having a starting point is really, really helpful.

That's gonna give you something to keep momentum going because you're not gonna get overwhelmed as quickly. If you are a person that can handle a lot of information, cool, but most of the time with me and my clients, having too much information is way too overwhelming. So maybe for the start, we focus on a particular thing first, and that might be really clear to you. Your values can help you to find what this thing is, if you don't know exactly what it is, it can be starting with what's happening in the country, it can be starting on learning about anti-blackness, it can be learning about systemic racism, first, if you're not sure exactly what to focus on, think about these questions that I'm gonna share, and figure out how you can narrow things down, and be specific about the answers to these questions, and also know that you don't have to answer all these questions at all, but maybe you think about, what's the most confusing to you right now?

Maybe you start with, I don't know a lot about this, and this is really something I don't know, so it really stumps me, so maybe I start there, or maybe you start with, what are you the most curious about? You're like, hmm, that seems to be like, pricking my interest a lot, that seems to be showing up, like maybe I should follow that first, or what is something that you feel like you know the least about that you wanna know even more about, like maybe the idea of classism, you're like, what the hell is that? And you start there, or maybe you're like, oh, I don't really know a lot about a specific moment in history or civil rights, or the slave trade, or I don't know a lot about the Chinese building the railroads, like any concept, any moment in history, any whatever, you're like, what, that's the thing, I never had any idea, maybe you start there. Is there an area that you know a little bit about that maybe you wanna circle back to, like maybe there is a specific thing that you're like, oh, I learned a little bit about this, but I think I want to learn more about it.

That can be something, or what's the most relevant or close to your life? Like, do you have kids and you wanna focus on learning about how to talk to your kids about racism? Something that happens in your job or your work life, that's like, oh, this is becoming really clear to me that I wanna learn about this thing based on what's happening in my life, or maybe there are things happening in your community specifically that are coming up that you're like, huh, I don't know a lot about that, it's becoming really clear that this is a big thing, I would want to focus on this first, maybe that's how you figure out where to start. Also know that you can change where you wanna start as many times as you want, I mean, I think it would be helpful to eventually stick with one, but if you look into something and you're like, oh, okay, maybe not right now, or you're like, oh, okay, that's all the information I found here, like it could be like a smaller part of information, rather than diving into something larger.

So know that as you answer these questions, you try to figure out where you're starting, you can always kind of pivot and readjust as that feels relevant and needed for you. Another small step that I think is pretty important here is check in with how you learn best. A lot of the start of doing the work is learning. You gotta learn what you don't know, so that you can do the work.

So you gotta do a lot of learning, absorbing, I say reading, but there's a lot of other media that you can learn about this stuff. So let's start with like, how do you learn best? Because the more that you identify how you learn best, the more you're gonna stay engaged. So take a moment and consider the many ways that you work best.

And you might have to reflect on like how you did this in school or maybe how you do this in your profession. So are you better alone? Or is it better for you to have a study partner? Or is it better for you to do this work in a smaller group of people, maybe like three or four or larger group of people?

What are the best ways for you to learn? Do you like audio? Is it best if it's long? Is it best if it's short?

Do you like podcasts? Do you like audio books? Are you a video person? Do you like long or short videos, documentaries, TED talks?

Reading, is that something that is helpful for you? Do you prefer the structure of a course, whether that's live or prerecorded? Do you like webinars that happen a bunch? Is there something to working one on one with someone and hiring someone to help you with this?

Do you also, depending on who you are and what your position is, do you also need business coaching for this as well? Like if you're like me and you're a wellness practitioner and you realize that there are some things about wellness and systemic oppression that happen here. Like are there specific additional layers of coaching that you would want or need? So maybe you wanted on an individual level, then figuring out how to apply that to your business or figuring out how to apply that to another area of your life?

Would having community in general be helpful for you in this realm? Whether that's like having a study group or just having people to in general process what you're learning with someone. Are those things that are helpful for you? Figuring out all these things is gonna figure out like what's gonna be a way for you to continue to do this work and start it.

If you realize that courses are really helpful for you because they give you that structure and you want to learn from an educator, definitely do your research and do your values, check on them. In episode 32 we do talk about how to find someone, like questions to ask, things to look at, and whoever you work with and hire, make sure that they align with your values as the person and that you align with their approach. See if you can do a little bit of vetting on the internet or if you know someone that worked with them, et cetera, just to make sure that the two of you are the right fit. Because just like any other service that you engage in or anybody that you hire, anyone that you work with, you wanna make sure that the values align and that the approach aligns so that you can learn the things that you want and need and that they can also have a reciprocal relationship with them.

So helpful to know. People that I have worked with and have also paid, it's important to come and say people for their time and their energy, especially in this work. I've already mentioned before, Dr. T.

Williams, all these people will be in the show notes, you don't worry about it. He teaches a course called Foundations for Social Justice. He teaches many others that I've taken afterwards, but Foundations is the first one. He does those live and then there's a self-paced one.

The live one has a set amount of enrollment and time. I've shared that on social media many times when they have come up and you can also buy a self-paced one where you watch recordings from a previous round and you watch them at your own pace. So there are options for you there, but he has been the person that I've worked with the longest and that I've really learned the most from. So Dr.

T. Williams, amazing person. Andrea Renee, she does a lot of business owner-related things. So she works with a lot of folks in the wellness industry in the health field in that world.

And she's really helpful for applying the liberatory approach to how you run a business, especially if you're in the business of service. Michelle Cassandra Johnson, she is great for working with people in the wellness and yoga communities. She is a yoga teacher herself. And so she would be a great person if you work in the wellness world or if you're a really passionate yoga person, instead of working with Michelle Cassandra Johnson, she has a book called Skill In Action that talks about this.

And then she's been doing a lot of workshops. She's been on a few podcasts. She's got a lot of things, so definitely go check out our website to see if that's relevant for you. And then I've also worked with and learned from Chrissy King.

She's been on the podcast before. I think she was episode 15. I'm going to guess but I'll put the actual number in the show notes. She is really helpful to learn from in the lens of health and wellness professionals.

She's been doing a series for those particular folks. So if you're in the health and wellness like pro world, like you're a professional in that, consider seeing what other opportunities that she's going to have. She also writes a lot for Shape Magazine, which is online, so I don't know why I call it Shape Magazine, but you know what I'm saying? She shares a lot of articles and she writes for them.

So consider checking out her website and her social media to see those as well. Someone that I haven't paid to work with, but I have learned from through three things that she's done, which is also, I think that happens. But if you're in the yoga world, or you're considering being a yoga teacher, you are a yoga teacher, or you feel extremely deeply connected to yoga, I would also highly recommend working with Susanna Bartaki. She is a Southeast Asian yoga teacher and she has been really leading the charge in how to make sure that non Southeast Asian folks honor yoga and its roots in a way that is actually in line with yoga.

Because yoga is a South Asian tradition. And when you think about yoga in the United States, it's usually for a twig women. So she had a series that ran, I think for about two years called Honor Don't Appropriate Yoga, and she's a sense of all of that into other online courses. And she's coming out with a book, either sometime in 2020 or sometime in 2021.

You can follow her on Instagram and she has a website where you can find all of her information. So if you're in the yoga world, and there's a lot to unpack in the yoga world, especially around them, cultural appropriation, and spiritual bypassing, all that stuff, definitely consider following her as well. So whoever you decide to learn from directly or indirectly, when I say indirectly, I mean like Instagram, newsletters, blog posts, books, et cetera, whoever you learn from in whatever ways that are helpful for you or whatever ways are helpful in your life. I know that I give you a lot of wellness professionally samples because I am a wellness professional.

So those are the kinds of lenses that I've been working on. Please consider compensating them for their time and their labor, see if they have a Venmo PayPal, Cash App, Patreon. Patreon, if you don't know, is a website where you pay a monthly patronage, basically. And they in exchange provide different levels of access.

This is how it can work, not everyone does it this way, but if you pay a certain amount, you'll get access to a certain amount of resources or things or whatever, a lot of people do have Patrons. A lot of it is, I'm gonna share articles or maybe have exclusive questions and answers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If they have a Patreon and you can do that, consider supporting them in that way, especially if you're learning from them indirectly, because outside of social justice work, anyone doing a lot of education based work, sharing concepts, sharing all that, that takes a lot of time, resources, et cetera. And even though capitalism is really fucking confusing and strange and I don't like it all the time, compensating people for their time and their labor and letting them know that like, yeah, this has been really helpful for me.

I would like to thank you and support you and tell you that I see the work that you're doing with money. It's important. I understand that there are a lot of different financial situations that everyone has during Corona times and also outside of Corona times. So even if you can't send like a dollar or $3 or whatever, one time, there are other ways that you could amplify and spread their message and how could you do that in a way that works for you?

Could you share their work with other people in your life? Could you be more engaged in their work? Like commenting, sharing, signing up for free things? Like there are other ways to show people that you are seeing and respecting their time and labor that may not be money.

And if you can't give them money, that could be great. So how would you like to learn? Who would you like to learn with? Where can you start there?

Another, it seems kind of like logistical, but I think it's really helpful to think about, especially if you're like me and you're more of a like, I need structure in order to help me keep doing this work, is pick a time of day or a day or several days of the week that you want to set aside to do this. So figure out what works best for you. Do you want to do this once a week? Do you want to do this for two hours every day?

An hour every day. Do you want to set aside like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, a Monday, Friday, a Saturday, Sunday, whatever works for you, figure out if setting aside consistent time every week is helpful. Also ask yourself, how are you going to make sure that it does happen? Are you a calendar person?

Do you need reminders in your phone? Are you a person that needs it to be a set number of hours, a set time range, or do you need to measure it in some other way? Like if time is like the actual minutes or hours isn't as relevant for you, do you want to do it as, I want to get this certain number of things done on this list. I want to read a certain amount of articles, I want to read a certain amount of pages, I want to watch a certain amount of things, et cetera, et cetera.

Take some time to figure out and set up that system and no one understand that system will change. There can be some set up time for this, and I think that's okay. I think figuring out how to make things work the best for you and doing a little bit of pre-planning can be helpful. If that's not helpful for you, if you're not that kind of person, figure out a way that you can stay accountable to continue doing this work throughout your week's days, et cetera.

Maybe you need an accountability partner, maybe there are some other ways that are helpful for you to do this work. Also, I want to say that if you are a scheduled person, it's also really important to build in some self-compassion for yourself, if when you are about to do that part of what you schedule on your calendar, if you realize if you check in with yourself and you're like, I can't do this today. Maybe you are tired in that moment, you're exhausted, you're going through some stuff, maybe you just need to rest. Make sure that you're also checking in with yourself of what you need in that moment.

Please do not make this another source of beating yourself up or shaming yourself. It's important to know that when you do that, that's actually some oppression, some internalized oppression at work. And that's actually really antithetical to doing this work in the first place. So it's important to know that and have awareness so you can be like, oh, oh, that's actually not really helpful for me to call myself a piece of shit for doing this work because that's actually oppressive and doing this to be aware of and not involve myself.

And so it's something to think about. It could also be if these feelings are popping up if these things, these shame and beating yourself up or like feeling really exhausted all the time, these could be showing you some things that might need some more love and attention from yourself, maybe from support that you need from other people in your life, whether those are personal people or a mental health professional. These could also be signs that you might need a little bit of extra attention and love to hold the capacity for yourself in order to actually do this work. Because if you don't have the space in your brain and your life to do it, it's gonna be really hard to extend that to someone else and to learn these things and to hold the space.

So think about that. If that comes up at the moment then please extend yourself a lot of kindness and compassion. Decide how you're gonna spend your time each day of the week or what you're doing. So I kind of mentioned this in the previous step and I wanna say it again, like if it's helpful for you, you can figure out what you're doing each day or like what you wanna do during that week.

So this could be setting aside time together information or resources, this could be listening, reading or watching any of those resources that you've gathered. This could be taking some action and calling or emailing people that are in offices or positions of power related to the things that you're interested in learning about and maybe helping within the moment. I know that there are a lot of people that are calling on a lot of really relevant issues right now. That could be something that you do.

Maybe that's also spending a part of your time donating your money or donating your time to a national or local organization related to the interest that you're starting with. And also I think it's important to make time for journaling and reflection that will help you continue to process the information that you're learning and also seeing how this stuff has affected you right now and how it's affected you historically because oppression, like I mentioned earlier, affects us all and the more that we reflect on how oppression has showed up in our lives, the more that we can kind of see how it's worked and also we can open up more awareness for the healing that we need to do as well because we all have been fucked by oppression. And we all are in a lot of need of healing for our own shit that we have as well. And so having that time to self-reflect can be really helpful to figure out the ways that you also need support.

So again, like I mentioned earlier, you're gonna be able to advocate for and support others when you've done your own work. As a nice segue, it's also really important as you do this work to schedule and make time for your own rest, joy and play. These are the things that are gonna recharge you and keep you human and support your own healing. Because like I mentioned, like shit's gonna come up based on your life, your experience, that's gonna need some support and some healing and some attention.

So sometimes when you can do this work, you can get stuck in, oh my God, I see everything, everything is terrible, it's doom and gloom. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I just gotta keep working, keep on learning, keep doing all the things and then you just kind of burn out and you can't help anybody there. So make sure that you also have time for rest, joy and play.

I'd also know that learning about this work and doing this work brings up a lot of emotions, whether that's because whatever you're learning is really difficult and I'm setting, whether those are emotions that are related to you and your life, maybe there's some past drama or some grief or some stuff that you can't quite name and we are gonna spend an entire episode talking about how to take care of yourself and how to support yourself as you do this work, that's gonna be a completely additional episode because that's also pretty important. So I've mentioned this a little bit earlier but I wanted to make this a whole step is find community to do this work with. Doing work in community, I've talked about this many times on the podcast alone, just doing me and with guests, doing work, any work in community is so helpful. It can really facilitate and speed up in a helpful way.

Now in a work doing this quickly, you see it done way. It can really facilitate conversation, you can really understand other perspectives and other points of views a little bit faster. When you have people to process with, you can also feel more reassured and feel less alone in siloed, like doing this work in community can be super helpful. Most of my learning has come in community around social justice work in group settings and it's been so helpful and probably has happened and made me think about way more things so much sooner than I would have thought was just doing this work alone.

So consider creating a group of folks to talk with, process and learn with. Maybe these are friends you've already talked about this stuff with anyway, maybe these are family members, whomever you feel like wants to do this work and they express that interest. It's really also helpful to be mindful of the identities of the people in this group and be really clear with everyone that there are different identities in the group and that people can be coming in from this at all different levels and different experiences and understandings. It could also be better depending on the group that you are thinking about or the people in that group.

It might be better to have a group with mostly people of the same race in one group, just so that the other people that have different racial identities can feel a little bit at ease. Maybe they have a little bit less of a risk of any kind of unintentional harm or microiressions based on the dynamics of the overall group and this is gonna depend on your group and your situation. If you realize that you have a group that's mixed in race but all of you have been talking about this for a while or you've all done maybe a little bit of work before, it might not be an issue or it could be an issue. It just depends on the group that you're thinking about putting together.

Consider people that have similar goals, that's really gonna help, are interested in learning similar things that you are so that you can kind of figure out how to have something a bit more cohesive and keep things in some kind of direction and make it a little bit easier for you or other people within this group to kind of herd cats. Because if you're all talking about different things, it can just kind of spin off into nothing. If you're creating this community yourself, rather than like a bunch of your friends are like, hey, let's do this thing together. Be really clear with you and the people that are in this group together, create some clear expectations and boundaries so that everyone is respected and heard and so no one feels heard or dismissed or whatever.

So be clear on what this group is about, why any boundaries. This can be as big or as small as you want. I would definitely go with people that you trust. I can be three people, four people, if you have a bunch of friends, maybe it's like 10 people.

Don't know, it's based on your life and the people in it. And also if you don't want to make a big group, consider at least having check-in partners or maybe smaller specific groups or things if you don't want to have a giant group. So at least some kind of accountability or some kind of person or people to process these things with and talk about and get different perspectives is important. And the last one, it may seem small, but I think it can be really helpful is record what you're doing each day or week depending on the schedule that you have.

Why is this helpful? It tracks your progress and can be really motivating for looking at this in the bigger picture. Like when you're like, oh, am I doing anything? Look at this thing, look at all this learning and time action that I've done over this month, over this week, et cetera.

So it keeps the momentum going. It can also help keep you accountable if you're in a blind journey, like, oh, I gotta write something down today, then that might give you a little extra nudge to do the thing. It's also important to consider noting the rest and the fun that you do as well. It also could be a great indication.

If you're feeling a bit like rundown, you're like, I don't know why. And you will get your notebook or counter wherever you're tracking this. You're like, oh, I realized that I haven't had that much fun time for myself this week. And that can be a way to let you know that you might need to take a little bit more care of yourself so that you can feel a little bit more available mentally and emotionally to do this work.

And again, we're gonna talk about this in a separate episode in more detail, but I wanna keep mentioning it to you. It's kind of planted in your brain. And also please make sure however you do this tracking, whatever it is, whether it's just writing it down in a notebook in a planner, et cetera, please make sure that this tracking is not another way to beat yourself up and say that you're a piece of shit. This plan will shift and this calendar will be different based on real life and personal things and maybe having to shift to prioritize taking care of yourself.

That's okay. So please make sure you add in additional care and kindness and compassion if you realize that you're starting to do this and then maybe something comes up in your life or maybe you've uncovered some stuff that needs some attention where you may not be able to do things that you've originally planned. It's okay, pivoting and adjusting for what's really here in this present moment is okay. So the small steps for setting up how to do this.

It's gonna go over the high level ones really, really quickly. So define your values and your wives, define a starting point to focus on and check back in with yourself if you feel like you can handle more or maybe different information, check in with how you learn best. Pick a day or days of the week to set aside, to do this work and then decide what you want to do during those times. Find community to do this work with and consider recording what you're doing each day or week that you're doing this.

So those are the small steps that we've talked about. Consider what small steps you want to take this week. And remember you don't have to do all of the steps then. They may not resonate with you or apply to your life or apply to how you do thing.

That's totally cool. But I encourage you to think about what you do want to do from this series because the important thing about this and also any change that you want to do is taking action and taking small steps. So we absorb this information, we think about it like we read the books and we watch the documentaries and then we also take action. So what action can you take this week?

What small steps can you take this week? If the bare minimum, like do you want to define your values and your wise? Do you want to decide or realize what's the best way that you learn? So think about what small steps that you want to take this week.

And also as always, this is a small step with most of the things but please remember to give yourself a lot of kindness and compassion as you do this work. It could be really new for you or it could be newer. It could be very uncomfortable. It could bring up a lot of stuff.

That's okay. How can you also take care of yourself while doing this work? Because the care and learning and the action, all those are important. There's not one that like trumps the other.

So think about that. So I'll be back next week with another installment of this series. In the meantime, please let me know what you think of this. If anything resonates with you, if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them as the series rolls on.

And so remember, until next week, you can do this. One small step at a time. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Small Steps Podcast. Please take a minute to subscribe, see the latest episodes and updates on the show.

If you love this episode, please rate and review it so it can be seen by other people and get higher in those rankings. And if you think this would resonate with someone else, please share it with them and let them know about it. And as always, until next week, you can do it. One small step at a time.