change.

Racism. 

Do you like to understand things in a simple way? A racist is a person who believes in a superior race. An antiracist is a person who believes in equal value, worth, and dignity of all humans. 

According to Ibram Kendi, all persons ebb and flow daily between racist and antiracist thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The practice of self-awareness helps us be aware of our thoughts, which have a tendency to reflect our beliefs, and to disrupt thoughts and beliefs that create an inferior existence of self or other. 

Our thoughts tell a story. The story we tell on the inside reflects our experience of what we observe on the outside.

When we tell a story of the powerful and the powerless, we propagate a limiting social narrative that suggests power is external and is based only on what can be observed in the physical world. 

We have the power to tell our own story.

Practicing self-awareness allows one to notice and disrupt limiting patterns of thought that are contributing to limiting outcomes. A limiting thought is one that puts limits on what is possible for yourself or another. 

Lasting and sustainable growth outcomes contribute to a thriving existence. A thriving existence is the result of recognizing discomfort and moving toward it, knowing that the discomfort is what gets your attention to act in a direction of positive change. Those who thrive feel empowered to change limiting outcomes that are not contributing to life experience. 

To exist as a human being, growth is a constant. To resist growth (ie. change) is to resist that which is a natural function of aliveness, of humanness. To believe that there is one absolute way of existing and functioning is disconnected from the nature of cells that form the physical experience. This belief will only result in more of the same. ‘Same’ is not a sustainable growth outcome. ‘Same’ does not build on itself. ‘Same’ may be perceived as comfortable, but it is not beneficial. 

Change is uncomfortable. It has to be uncomfortable in order to gain the attention needed to create new outcomes that are more relevant, purposeful, and life-giving for self and other.