4. Engaging Mindfully
Capacity Four: Engaging Mindfully
Key Question: “What is helpful?”
Mindfulness Work:
We examine our own role in a system and explore how we may pair our personal gifts and passions with what communities need to ensure we actually address “What is helpful?”
Social Change Work:
We employ the five capacities and key questions methodically across the social innovation design and implementation process using the lens of mindfulness to discern what is helpful without imposition.
Mindfulness Work
Under the capacity of engaging mindfully, our individual mindfulness work is investigating our own blind spots and role in the existing system, and understanding what we have to bring towards change. As we cultivate the capacities of mindfulness, we become adept at setting aside ego, assumptions, and bias to inquire and listen. We are less likely to think our way is the only viewpoint, less likely to create division and blame, and more likely to seek out understanding across differences so as to identify common ground. Finally, CSC invites us to examine our role in the systems that perpetuate harm. We look at how we can bring more consciousness and integrity into every relationship - our relationship to the earth, our relationships with other beings and community, our use of resources, our positionality and understanding of power, our communications, our contributions, and our values. As we bring contemplation into every dimension of our lives and interactions, we begin to align our inner journey with our everyday choices and what is helpful and supportive to a life of mindful engagement.
Practices and Frameworks Supporting this Capacity for the Individual:
Deeper embodiment of the CSC methodology integrates reflection on our level of attunement, alignment, and presence across all dimensions of our lives. This might include exploring and engaging mindfully in our relationship with:
time as a resource
love and full presence in relationships
power as experienced emotionally, physically, cognitively, in dominant culture given positionality, privilege and oppression, with family of origin and others, and from within
community, space, and place
the earth
money, our sense of abundance or scarcity, and reciprocity
purpose, joy, beauty, and creation
listening, attention and communications
embodiment of our values and truth
Enjoy this simple practice for applying compassion in relationships.
Social Change Work
As a core capacity of Conscious Social Change, Engaging Mindfully first involves applying an intention of curiosity, non-judgment, compassion, and connection to our social change work. Mindfulness trains us to look at reality with greater curiosity. Instead of seeing failure, mindfulness encourages us to examine circumstances with an eagerness to learn so that we evolve our solutions for greater efficacy. Rather than getting fixated on pushing forward our own narrow agenda or thinking it is all up to us to fix, mindfulness drives us to lead with more openness, question our thinking, seek out more diverse expertise, and be willing to compromise as a strategy towards progress.
Next, CSC invites engaging mindfully in relationship with others. This transformational paradigm is inner-driven with a focus on serving the highest common good. We do not foster division to motivate change from an “us versus them” paradigm. We seek to understand with compassion from all perspectives and invite participation and collaboration across stakeholder groups. We do not use punitive measures or incentives to force compliance with our agenda. We start with self-examination and explore where we might need to change in relationship to the issue and in our relationship with others first. As we transform our personal role in a system and strengthen our capacity to listen mindfully, we notice how this shifts our relationship with others and our perspectives. We then invite collective engagement to explore what is helpful.
Conscious change agents do not impose what they think is best; instead, they invite and encourage all stakeholders to express their ideas and vision. They honor the wisdom of lived experience and the strengths of each party. Drawing from a broader set of perspectives and inviting greater participation across whole ecosystems gives us a more comprehensive understanding of an issue and stakeholder needs, ideas, and priorities, which we can use in co-designing for change. This fuels innovation and drives sustainability, informed by all voices who are more likely to feel a level of ownership in a solution’s outcomes, rather than an unwilling subject of its implementation. We then determine our unique way to contribute and serve as an ally – not overly control, not abdicate control, but partner consciously with others involved in and impacted by the issue. Within this paradigm, allies and funders trust and honor that the core stakeholders can and will determine solutions as experts in what is happening, what is true, what is needed, and what is helpful.
As we begin to engage in social transformation work as conscious change agents, we continue to use mindfulness to stay attuned to the changing needs of those we aim to serve, so we do not get stuck on our own agenda, abuse our power, or become disconnected. Too often, service-based organizations can become attached to their core programs. Their orientation becomes activity-driven over purpose or issue-driven - declaring “we do this” as opposed to holding intention with openness for “we are trying to solve this”. Organizations may compromise their ability to generate transformational impact if they are not closely evaluating their effectiveness or noticing the shifting, underlying needs of their community. There is pressure to demonstrate impact in terms of concrete, quantitative outputs, when inner transformation may actually be harder to measure or take more time than a typical grant cycle. When progress prioritizes increasing size and scale, it drives the need to keep the non-profit engine funded and ever growing.
With the CSC approach, we prioritize alleviating the underlying issue within complex systems, and ultimately putting ourselves out of business. We regularly rediagnose with ongoing curiosity to understand the underlying human dynamics. Social value creation is maximized by applying mindfulness in deep examination of the issue, our theory of change, and our impact. Our understanding of these issues is informed by the stakeholders themselves, and remains flexible and responsive as needs change. This helps us refine offerings to achieve transformation more effectively. Though replication may be valuable to bring solutions to scale, ultimately, CSC ensures organizations exist only for the common good, not for their own survival. Conscious change agents are less concerned with branding an innovative solution. We are committed to sharing our resulting wisdom to benefit the wider field.
Practices and Frameworks Supporting this Capacity in Social Change:
Following are a range of frameworks that CSC employs to build solutions through applied mindfulness:
Understanding the Conventional vs. Conscious Social Change Model
Examining our role in a system
Assets analysis – leveraging our unique talents and passion
Exploring issue-driven vs. activity-driven models
Theory of change – identifying what is helpful and the mechanisms that will enable transformation
Mindful visioning
Deep listening and conscious communications strategies that support transformation
Inquiry without imposition facilitation skills and respecting local wisdom
Goal and transformation – considering what your unique contribution is towards root level and systemic shifts
Values embodiment audits
Frameworks for evaluation, ensuring the methods used are empowering not extractive (link to our article on evaluation)
Click here for a guide to Assets Analysis for Social Innovation (PDF).
