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In today’s issue, I’m going to show you how I went from being an angry, burned out activist to a happier and more effective problemsolver.

Once you learn this process, you’ll start to see every moment as an opportunity to commit to your deepest values and goals.

The biggest problem is that everyone is so committed to making a big impact, that they never take a minute to be present in the struggle.

Who is preventing the change you wish to see?

I consider myself a rational person.

When looking at the suffering and injustice in the world, I can analyze the situation and its causes with rigor.

But from there it’s been easy to be outraged. Angry. Ready to fight.

In my mind, the pain of the world could only be numbed by a total commitment to activism. For years I used moral outrage to fuel work against those I thought of as “the enemy.”

During that time I couldn’t even sleep because I was constantly judging, strategizing, planning, and fantasizing.

No matter what I achieved, it was never enough. There was always more I wanted to change. Or another issue to crusade for.

When I burned out in 2021, I decided to stop struggling. There had to be another way.

Instead of trying to change the world, I started to look at my own thoughts and feelings through the lens of behavioral psychology.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last year:

Fight complex problems like you “fight” quicksand

Imagine hiking in the woods and accidentally getting caught in quicksand.

Naturally, you’d want to get out right away. But the more you try to get out, the further you sink. 

And as you get deeper, the more panicked you get. You flail around only to go deeper still.

Now, the only way to escape quicksand is to create as much surface area as possible with your body. You actually have to lay down and stop struggling.

The quicksand trap metaphor is commonly used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy. 

What’s the lesson?

Well, sometimes trying harder makes things worse, not better. You have to create enough room to realize that what you’ve previously been doing hasn’t worked.

It’s also about getting into close contact with the problem. Instead of struggling against it, or running from the pain it causes, you accept the problem and how you feel about it. 

In this case, “accept” doesn’t mean you are OK with a situation, much less think it is just. It just means that (1) you are committed to seeing reality exactly like it is; (2) you accept how you feel about it without judgment.

In this way you can stop letting unwanted emotions control your behavior. 

Once you’ve connected with the present moment, you can move on to effective action.

Are you acting like the world you want to see?

The quicksand metaphor is undoubtedly about personal psychology, but I think it applies well to collective efforts to end homelessness or reduce poverty. 

So many activists are so caught up in their own emotional responses to these issues that they’ve lost sight of the problem. 

I certainly did.

Overworked and overwhelmed, I was in groups that crafted ever-larger visions to avoid examining why our current efforts weren’t working. 

And we felt morally justified. This led to a certain righteousness about our proposed solutions. We knew we had the answers.

But did we? 

Probably not. 

We were just flailing around. Mad as hell.

How do you know if you might be sinking in the proverbial quicksand? 

I use the FEAR acronym.

• Fusion.  You so fully identify with your own thoughts and emotions that you “fuse” with them, believing that they are very important and the gospel truth. 
• Excessive expectations. Your goals are so big that you feel overwhelmed, or you expect that you should make consistent progress without making any mistakes.
• Avoidance of discomfort. To escape uncomfortable feelings of failure or anxiety, you try to stay busy at all costs, or pour all efforts into a cause that will solve things once and for all.
• Remoteness from values. Your actions are driven more by immediate impulses and negative emotions than by your deepest beliefs.

It’s scary to feel this way.

And yet so many do. 

The 3 core principles of ACT offer professional changemakers (like you and me) an alternative:

1. Accept your thoughts and feelings

It’s futile to control thoughts and feelings because they’re sort of like the weather: always present and ever changing. As such, you learn “defusion,” or how to relate to your feelings in a new way. By accepting feelings for what they are – just stories in your head – you open up space to see your situation more clearly.

2. Connect with your values

Our thoughts and feelings are often about dwelling in the past or worrying about the future. The alternative is to deeply connect with the present moment. You try to give your full attention to the task at hand, as well as connect with your deepest values.

3. Take effective action

It may sound ridiculous, but the only options you ever have are to accept your current situation and then choose effective action.

Based on these principles, I’ve slowly made progress. 

Sure, I still get angry and burned out. 

But now I know that these are just fleeting thoughts. They don’t control me. I take a moment and then recommit to effective action based on my deepest beliefs.

Here’s how you can start your own journey.

4 steps to accept emotions and take effective action

You’re in a meeting and someone says that stupid, offensive thing again. What should you do?

1. Observe. Take a moment to observe yourself, almost like from the third-person perspective. Watch and feel your emotions come and go. In your head, you could say something like, “I notice that I’m feeling angry and aggressive.”
2. Breathe. Take a deep breath and feel your body sitting in the chair. Watch the emotion slowly ebb. When you’re ready you can turn your attention back to the present situation.
3. Expand. Make room for your emotions. They are what they are. You don’t have to judge them or change them.
4. Allow. You may not like or approve of a situation (in fact you may totally detest it), but it is what it is. The purpose of this step is to give yourself enough room to take effective action based on your values.

Unpleasant emotions will always be there. Like quicksand, ready to eat you up.

I hope this post gives you the skills to transcend them.

See you again next week.

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Whenever you’re ready, there are two ways I can help you:

→ I’m a strategic advisor for the toughest societal problems like poverty, crime and homelessness. People come to me when they want to stop spinning their wheels and get transformative, systems-level change.

→ I’m a coach for emerging and executive leaders in the social and public sectors who want to make progress on their biggest goals and challenges.

Let’s find out how I can help you become transformational.