At Two Minds, we like to take a breath before responding to anything with a hot take. In fact, we’re just not hot-take people. That makes us a tad boring at times when the evident goal of people in power is to cause a panicked or outraged reaction, no matter what their behavior. We’re not mentioning any names. Ellen has many years of meditative practice and training under her belt, and so does Matt. In fact, both of us meditated today before we met to write this. It’s not a hot take. It’s a 70-degrees-Fahrenheit meditation, really, a lot like the weather in San Diego.
It’s still important to respond, and often forcefully, to bad behavior. But to quote Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
What does this all mean for speaking up, when you’re an organization focused on fairness? Well, it’s complicated. When you’re working with us, we’re going to encourage you to take that breath before responding. Waiting 24 hours before doing anything may mean you miss the news cycle, but often our clients don’t benefit hugely from catching it. Instead, we encourage you to reflect on what the story of your work is over the longer term, and to invest in telling it on your own terms, and not in soundbites, or in response to what somebody else just said.
Working to deliver fairness and equity is hard work, and it often comes with challenges and failings. We don’t expect our clients to come to us perfect, or with perfect histories. After all, we’re here to help! But we do ask that you’re prepared to reflect on where you may have learned how not to tell your story in the past, and why you want to tell it differently and perhaps with more patience and intention, now.
To help, we specialize in getting our clients to enter into a thoughtful partnership, rather than a fraught one. It’s why we encourage face-to-face meetings where possible, and the sharing of a meal before we get down to business. It doesn’t mean we’re moving slowly, and neither are you. It means that our time together is intentional and patient.
Some of our most rewarding client relationships take shape in a space of mutual compassion and empathy. The clients come to us ready to trust and enjoy our expertise and insights, and we approach them with a sense of reverence, grateful that we’ve been trusted to steer some important and powerful ships.
We do operate with a sense of urgency when there’s a knock on the door or a fire to put out. If you really need to hit the news cycle because of real, imminent change, then we know how to prepare you to do it strategically.
The point of this piece, though, is to celebrate the idea of pausing for a minute, a day, or a few days, before your best intentions to speak up drain and misdirect your energy. We also noticed that guided meditation company Headspace.com is offering two weeks free to start the year, which is very kind of them.
If you’re curious to find out more, let’s chat!
Ellen Mendlow and Matt Davis are the co-founders of TwoMindsComms.com